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Sept. 21, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:25:43

AN INTROVERT'S WORST NIGHTMARE!

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	Good morning, everybody.
	This is Stefan Molyneux from FreeDomain.
	Welcome to our Sunday morning.
	It is the 20th of September 2020.
	Ah, 2020. How's your 2020 been?
	It's been quite exciting for me.
	I'm sure it's been quite exciting for you guys out there.
	It is the year. So nice they numbered it twice.
	Oh... And here we are on the Bataan death march to the election in the United States, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and now, of course, there is a massive battle shaping up, fundraising on the Democrats' side, and a desire on the Republican side to hold the Democrats to words they uttered in the past about filling a Supreme Court vote.
	Seat vacancy before an election and wondering, gosh, they seem to have changed their mind about that.
	Well, of course they have. Of course they have.
	Good morning, Crypto H. Good morning to everyone else who's joining me here.
	And yeah, I've got topics if you like.
	I've got an Ask Me Anything receptivity radar bowl on my forehead if you would like that.
	Instead, I am all ears or all voice as you like.
	And I guess we'll keep it a little bit short today because I don't know about you, but when you live in a Kind of biased, schizophrenic, up-and-down climate like Canada, which has more, I guess it has more mood swings temperature-wise than Kanye West has in his relationship to the Music industry,
	then what you want to do is those last couple of days where the weather is good and you can actually get outside and fly a kite or go for a hike or play some volleyball or whatever it is that gets your juices flowing, that's what you want to do.
	You're just drawn outside to drink in.
	I guess it's like a biological thing.
	This is my last conversation. In search of the vitamin D. I should probably mention that, since, if I remember rightly...
	Searching for the D means something else in certain sections of the internet.
	Good morning, Devin.
	Good morning, Trailrunner.
	Good morning, everyone here.
	And, yeah, hit me with some questions.
	I will start with a couple of topics while the questions arise.
	Oh, one other thing.
	Let me just throw something else up here.
	La-la-la-la-la-la. And I'll be happy to hear from you.
	Do you take pills like Jordan Peterson did?
	What a story.
	What a story.
	My gosh. My gosh, what a story.
	So pills? I mean, I take a couple of supplements.
	But no, I don't take any pills in particular.
	A bit of vitamin D in the winter, myself, and lutein I like for eye health and all that kind of stuff.
	You know, when you work with a lot of screens, I think it's kind of important to go talk to your optometrist and listen to what he or she has to say.
	One thing, of course, would be 20, 20, 20, right?
	That's what she told me. Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet or further away for about 20 seconds.
	That's a good thing to do.
	That's a good thing to do.
	So, let's see here.
	I just have to... There's one other place where I can get questions from here.
	I want to make sure I get a hold of that.
	All right. Should I buy Hex Cryptocurrency?
	I've been meaning to get back into cryptocurrency.
	So I did a lot of cryptocurrency work back in the day.
	You can still find my presentation from many years ago called The Truth About Bitcoin.
	It used to be on YouTube.
	Now you can find it on Library.
	You can find it on BitChute.
	You can find it on working on Brighteon and all of that.
	So I hope that...
	Have you played Among Us yet?
	No, I have not.
	Does your daughter have to wear a mask in school?
	No, because she's homeschooled.
	It's so funny, yesterday she did her, I guess her first live stream to the general population, the gen pop, as they used to say in the big house.
	Actually, I didn't grow up in a big house, but you know what I mean.
	And I just fired at her a couple of questions.
	It's not like I want to show off her brain, but it's not like I made it directly or anything, but her brain is pretty cool.
	And we had a sort of...
	Oh, something was two out of five.
	Oh, yes. The watchers, we did Microsoft Flight Simulator, and the time really flew by.
	It was a lot of fun. You should check it out.
	But... Somebody, I was asking what the odds were of her landing a particularly difficult plane.
	She's like really taken to flight simulator like she was born to fly.
	And she was coming in for a flight simulator landing.
	It was really, really tricky.
	And people were like, she was concentrating on the landing and people were like, oh no, she was standing to mind.
	And the odds were like two and five.
	And I said, two and five in percentage.
	She's like, 40 percent. Boom.
	It's really cool. It's really a wild phase when, I mean, she's hitting puberty and all that, and it's just an amazing phase because the brain is just, I mean...
	You kind of get a sense of how tall kids are going to be.
	She's going to be 12 in a couple of months.
	You kind of get a sense of how tall kids are going to be, how smart they're going to be.
	That's kind of a whole other question that goes on when you're a parent.
	And the good news is I know that it's not fundamentally up to me as a parent.
	Her intelligence is largely...
	Genetic, right? 80% by your teens, 90% I've heard by later adulthood.
	So, you know, I got 10, 20% to work with.
	That's pretty good. That's pretty good.
	You know, if there was a pill that gave you 20% greater muscles or, I don't know, as the spam box says, 20% greater penis length, you'd probably be kind of interested, right?
	Or less, in my case, of course.
	I had to shave that redwood back.
	But... Yeah, so it's a really, really wild thing to occur.
	Okay, let's see here.
	Do you have any tips to improve on introversion?
	Oh, that is a very, very good question.
	That is a very, very good question.
	So, introversion.
	So, recognize that...
	So, the big five personality traits, extroversion and introversion is one of them.
	They are, to a large degree, genetic.
	I guess I'm pounding that same drum again, but they are, to a large degree, genetic.
	So, first of all, don't be too bothered by your personality traits, because it's not like in the world as a whole, There is a good personality trait that everyone should have, right?
	Because a lot of people, like, they look at the opposing personality traits with a kind of envy, and that's usually not a good idea to do.
	I mean, it's okay to look over there and learn things from it and so on, but it's usually not great to merely envy somebody else's personality traits.
	It's kind of like envying their height or their hair or their facial structures or whatever it is.
	Those things are genetic, and envying genetics is a pretty bad idea because envy should spur you to action, right?
	Envy that spurs you to action is a good thing.
	Like when I was a kid, I envied the few kids I knew who had sort of stable, happy homes.
	I remember a friend of mine, he later became a university professor.
	I was the best man at his wedding.
	His household was paradise.
	Like, to me, actual paradise.
	His father was a professor and it was wonderful there.
	When we would go over there for parties, there'd be trivia questions, intelligence questions taped to the door.
	There'd be scavenger hunts.
	It was a great, positive environment, and it gave me such a path to it's possible, right?
	Like when you're born into this underworld of dysfunction and destruction and abuse and immaturity and weirdness and so on, it's very easy for that biodome of class, in a sense, to just go over you and seal you into that underworld like a cyst, and you've got to find some way out of hell.
	Escaping hell is really the whole purpose of philosophy, preventing hell if you can, escaping hell if you're in.
	And so I envied his life.
	You know, I remember sitting in his kitchen, I must have been 13 or 14 years old, sitting in his kitchen with his mom, with his...
	There's a couple of my friends there.
	And we had a long debate about whether British colonialism was good or bad.
	I'll take things that never happened in my household for 666, Alex.
	And so to me, I envied that.
	And I couldn't obviously create that as a child.
	See, as a child, I tried to create...
	Heaven in the hell I was born in through words, through language, through philosophy, through reason, through debate, through conversation.
	Right? So this is an old...
	It's an old parlor trick of mine, although we had a small apartment, never had a parlor.
	But... You...
	For me, trying to use words to undo the chaos and anti-rationality of my mother...
	I'm an old fencer in this particular sword fight, and that was something I was really, really focused on, desperately focused on.
	Then, of course, for 15 years, I've been trying it with the world and to varying degrees of success, not so much with the big institutions, of course, but with individuals like yourselves.
	That is a very big plus, a very big plus.
	So... Envy is really important if you can do something about it.
	Right? So, if, you know, if you envy, I don't know, like I'm a bald guy, right?
	If you envy guys with great hair, okay, I guess I could get hair transplants or something.
	Like, I've got some wiggle room in the back inside here, but, I mean, my mother was upset with the size of her nose for many years, finally got a nose job with the idea that this would bring her love.
	And it didn't, of course. It didn't because it doesn't fix the things that she did to her children and to others, right?
	It doesn't undo her conscience.
	More attractive features do not undo A bad conscience, neither do they generate a good conscience, so I guess I would say it's far more important to do good than to look good, because the looking good part is going to fade over time anyway.
	So envy is really, really good if it can spur you to action.
	If you're overweight and you envy somebody who can climb the stairs without pausing, well, you can do something about being overweight, so you should really work to aim at doing that.
	If you can't do anything about it, then envy is a form of self-abuse.
	Because you're saying, I'm not good enough, and I never will be good enough, because I can't fundamentally change my nature, your personality.
	You can't fundamentally change your personality.
	If you're looking at somebody who's extroverted, right?
	So, you know, this is the nightmare for an introverted person, right?
	An introverted person faces going to a party where you don't know anyone and trying to have to find your way into A conversation, right? And that's kind of rough, right?
	So, I mean, we've all been in this situation.
	I mean, most of us, right? One time or another.
	You get invited to a party.
	You don't know the people there.
	Your friends say they're going to meet you, but they're late, and you're kind of there.
	So what do you do? You go in, and there's a whole bunch of people who know each other, who are laughing, who are dancing, who are chatting, who are doing whatever.
	This is back in the day when such things could occur without the government swooping in with a phalanx and a SWAT team.
	So... That's the nightmare for the introvert.
	Now, for the extrovert, what they do is they come in loud, right?
	And part of that's to cover insecurity, but they come in loud and, hey, I'm here!
	My friends aren't here! Who wants to engage me in a conversation because I don't want things to be too awkward and I'm not going to stand around the outside!
	So honesty has a lot to do with that as well, right?
	So the introvert often feels that because He is shy that there's something wrong with him, that everyone else is confident that he's insecure and everyone else is confident.
	And that's usually not the case at all, right?
	So the way I think that you should do is go and be honest, right?
	So you can go and be honest and you can say to a group that's talking with each other, I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I was invited to the party by so-and-so.
	They're not here. Totally awkward.
	Got nothing to do, nothing to say.
	My name is Steph. I do this.
	Please continue with the conversation, but just be aware I'm going to look for a way in so that I can be part of the conversation because I don't want to stand over in the corner like I'm somebody sizing the place up for a shooting, you know?
	That's not good, right? So that's just being honest, right?
	And, you know, most people, most times, if you're just kind of frank and honest that way...
	They're like, hey man, welcome.
	You know, that's pretty awkward. I've been there myself.
	You know, this happened to me a couple of weeks ago.
	It's really weird, right? So that's That's the introvert.
	Just be honest. Just go in and be honest.
	But the introvert feels, a lot of times, it doesn't even cross their mind.
	Like, they have to find some way to get into that conversation, but without being direct and without being honest.
	But honesty is the cure for a lot of these kinds of dysfunctions.
	So I would definitely work on that kind of stuff.
	For sure. For sure.
	But don't envy your opposites too much because that turns into an I'm not good enough and I can't become good enough, right?
	So my family when I was growing up was not good enough, but...
	My family now that I've had a choice in, I didn't have a choice in where I was born, but I had a choice in who I married.
	And because I had a choice in who I married, who became the mother of my child, I also had a choice in the nature of my child, right?
	Because if you look at somebody you want to date or somebody you want to go out with...
	What you want to do is you want to look at and say, okay, would the mix of the two of us be someone I want to spend 20 years around?
	You know, a lot, because that's kind of important.
	So if the relationship is a good relationship, the relationship is kind of like a third party, right?
	There's you, there's the other person, and then there's you together, which is like the relationship, which is kind of like a third party, right?
	Yeah. And so if you like the relationship, which is the third party, odds are you're going to like the child, which is a mix of the two of you, and a real third party, not a sort of metaphorical third party like the relationship.
	So for sure, you can...
	I chose my family now, and partly because of philosophy and a lot to do with talk therapy, right?
	For those of you who don't know, I was in talk therapy for...
	Close to two years, three hours a week.
	I also did another eight hours of reading and journaling and figuring out myself.
	And I'm a huge fan of talk therapy.
	If you get a good therapist, man, there's nothing better.
	I mean, I dropped a lot of coin on that, but cheaper than a divorce, right?
	And so I would really, really recommend if you get a good therapist.
	So as far as that goes, just look at Being honest in awkward situations.
	Naming awkwardness tends to...
	See, what it does, naming awkwardness tends to figure out or reveal who around has empathy, right?
	Because if people have empathy, they'll be like, oh man, yeah, that's kind of awkward, right?
	So they kind of empathize.
	But if people are kind of cruel to you, like don't bring your problems.
	I don't care who invited you and who didn't show up.
	Don't bring your weird little social problems to us.
	It's like you don't want to hang with those people because they're weird and creepy and they're going to get you in a whole lot of trouble.
	Not as much as going to the Chateau Marmont, but you're going to get you in a lot of trouble.
	So you want to steer clear of those kinds of people.
	So accept that there's great strength.
	Because here's the thing, too. You've got to understand that the extrovert has it really tough as well.
	I started off really shy.
	I figured out the honesty thing pretty well early on, and that helped a lot.
	But The extrovert, so for the introvert, the nightmare is going to a party.
	You don't know anyone. How do you break into the social conversation or the social environment?
	And for the extrovert, though, the nightmare is you end up in some place where you're supposed to be with people, but other people can see that you're alone.
	So if you're an introvert, back in the day when you could go to a movie theater, you probably went to movie theaters occasionally on your own.
	I have for sure. When my daughter was younger and couldn't be left alone, I reviewed movies.
	And I would go to the movie theater on my own because my wife would need to stay home to be with our daughter.
	And sometimes a friend would be available.
	Sometimes he wouldn't. Or friends would be available.
	Sometimes they wouldn't. Because, of course, when you become a parent, you tend to hang out with other parents who themselves have young children.
	And they can't often nip out for a movie or whatever it is.
	So... So I would go to a movie on my own.
	When I was younger, I have a very strong memory.
	I don't know if it's still there.
	There's a restaurant called Planet, The Daily Planet.
	I think it was named after the Superman newspaper or something like that.
	There was a restaurant called The Daily Planet, which was at Young and Eglinton.
	And I remember I had a book of the Collected Works of Voltaire, and I went to that restaurant when I was in my 20s, and I sat alone, and they had this deadly dish back then, which was croissant with cream cheese and salmon.
	I can't remember. It was really good, really rich, but really good.
	And I remember sitting...
	On a Friday night, they had a little narrow patio.
	I guess they still do. It's their only source of revenue these days.
	Well, it's takeout, right? And I remember sitting on that patio, reading Voltaire, and people watching, because I always love to people watch.
	I really enjoy that. And I was eating by myself, and it was a great night.
	I mean, in the company of a great thinker, having unbelievably rich food, which I could digest because I wasn't over 50.
	And... Yeah, it was like lox and bagel, but on a cross line.
	Yeah, something like that. Oh, was it?
	And capers, too. I don't like capers normally.
	They're little Satan nuggets of salty death, but you throw them in with a bagel and lox, it's really, really good.
	So, I go to movies on my own.
	I would dine out on my own.
	When I was...
	Writing. Oh man, for those of you who...
	I'll just give you the link here, but you should check these books out.
	FDRURL, Free Domain Radio URL. FDRURL.com forward slash almost.
	You get my latest reading of my historical novel.
	It's a Lord of the Rings magnum opus, but as I'm reading it, I'm like, holy crap.
	It's good stuff. Really good stuff.
	It's a really epic novel about all of Europe, from the First World War to the Second World War.
	Well, to the Battle of Britain, basically.
	And I also have a modern comedy novel called The God of Atheists.
	You can get that at fdrurl.com forward slash TGOA, The God of Atheists.
	And when I was writing those, I didn't want to just sit at home.
	And so I would go to a coffee shop.
	And I would get an Americano, which was the biggest coffee I could get.
	That was not just a regular old coffee, which I didn't really like there.
	And I'd have my headphones on, and I'd sit, and I would just write.
	And man, when I was in the groove, when I was in the flow for novel writing, I was like 5, 6, 7,000 words a day.
	And it's an amazing thing. If you've ever gone whitewater rafting, it's like you go over the rocks, and then you hit a calm spot, and you just...
	And that's what it's like when you're writing, when you're kind of in the creative zone.
	You're just pounding out the language, the characters are yelling in your heads, the metaphors and the analogies are flowing, and things are just perfectly working together.
	And then it can be sometimes in the middle of the scene, usually when a scene tails off or ends, you're just like, ah, I'm done.
	I got nothing else in me.
	You know, when you really got to pee and then you're done, you're like, ah, Steve Martin style.
	So... So yeah, I would crank out.
	So this novel is 340,000 words.
	I mean, it's a huge, huge book.
	There's three books.
	It was originally planned to come out as three books, but I'll put them all together in one feed.
	And I've done book one. I'm just starting on book two.
	And, yeah, no, and now I don't go out to write as much anymore, obviously, right?
	But I'm working on my parenting book, Peaceful Parenting.
	And what I do is I get on a treadmill because I know the physics, I know the sort of biology, right?
	The biology is that if you're kind of sitting hunched over, your creativity tends to go down after a while.
	But if you are walking, which walking and writing is kind of tough unless you're going to dictate and transcribe later.
	So I have voice dictation, a headset, I listen to some classical music, and I'm walking fairly fast uphill on a treadmill for an hour or two while I dictate.
	And that is the way that I've written the last number of books.
	I wrote Out of the Argument.
	You can get that at outoftheargument.com.
	I wrote Essential Philosophy.
	You can get it at EssentialPhilosophy.com and Peaceful Parenting.
	I'm working on the same way because the blood flow and the movement and so on, there's a reason why people used to walk and talk, right?
	Adam Smith was famous for walking and talking because that's where you sometimes get your best thinking done.
	And he was famous for getting so involved in the conversation once he just walked into a giant pit because I guess he didn't really see it.
	Didn't really see it coming, so...
	So, yeah, I mean, recognize that the extroverts have it tough, too, because when you're an extrovert, you define yourself to a large degree by the impact you have on others.
	Right? So an extrovert defines himself positively by the impact he has on others.
	I'm the center of attention.
	I've got the lampshade on my head.
	I'm like that. Blah, blah, blah.
	Right? And the introvert also defines himself by his Effect on others, which is really that the others have an effect on him and usually make him feel overwhelmed or whatever it is, right?
	But recognize that the extrovert has a lot of trouble too, because if you are defined by your impact on others, then when other people aren't around, You ghost yourself, right? You kind of don't exist in a way.
	And so you have to seek out other people in order to have an impact on them, in order to know that you exist.
	And the non-existence or the feeling of non-existence, of living death in a way that the extrovert experiences when not in the presence of others, It's something that the introvert doesn't experience except when in the presence of others, right? So the introvert is so overwhelmed by others that when other people around, the introvert kind of shrinks up and disappears.
	So the introvert disappears in the presence of others.
	The extrovert disappears in the absence of others.
	So, I mean, I think you want to have access to both capacities.
	Introverts are very, very important because most originality comes from isolation.
	Most originality comes from isolation.
	Because if you're out there just, you know, doing a show and impressing people and so on, it's tough to be truly original, but true originality generally comes from isolation.
	So if you want new things in the world, you need your introverts.
	But bringing that creativity into the world, like an introvert will write a book, you need an extrovert to get it out into the world, right?
	Like Darwin could come up with his theory of evolution, but he needed a guy called Darwin's bulldog who would go out and just ferociously pound those ideas and debate those ideas into everyone else.
	So... It's good to have flexibility in your personality structure for sure because it's, you know, you do have to wear different hats in your life.
	But don't imagine that the extrovert has, you know, there's a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, so to speak.
	The extrovert, and there's times when the extrovert looks at the introvert with envy as well because the introvert is not addicted to impacting others, right?
	And that's a tough life.
	I mean, that's a tough life. Comedians are kind of like this.
	As well, that they have this desire to impact others so much.
	So, go for honesty.
	Go for honesty, right?
	I mean, the extrovert would be wise at some point to say, I'm just kind of tired of having to be on all the time, and everyone expected me to be this on guy.
	I'm tired of being this endless billboard for a spangly personality, and I'm tired of pretending that everything's great.
	I had a relationship. Sorry, that sounds a little gay.
	I had a friendship with a guy.
	I envied him to some degree.
	This is the guy I experimented with drinking alcohol with.
	And I had a couple of weekends in my late teens of excessive drinking.
	And I used to have this test for myself.
	Am I actually drunk? If I could recite to myself...
	There's a little detail of my life that would have died with me, I guess.
	I would have...
	I would recite to myself the definition of a galaxy.
	And if I could recite to myself the definition of a galaxy, then I wasn't drunk.
	And a galaxy is a mass of interconnected stars held together by a central gravitational pull or something.
	I can't remember. Something like that, right?
	And I never got to the point where I would ever lose that.
	Like I could always, like no matter how drunk I was, I would get sort of the spins, you know, like you ain't drunk if you can lie on the ground without holding on.
	I would get the spins which would be really unpleasant and I threw up once or twice.
	But I never had that whatever self-erasure that people get from alcohol where it's the only way they can quiet a bad conscience or voices telling them they're not good enough or whatever.
	So this guy...
	My friend, I didn't call him Bob, it wasn't his name.
	Bob was a super cool guy.
	Good looking. You know, wore those risky business sunglasses like nobody's business and had a wealthy family.
	He had this really cool bedroom.
	I've always loved these kinds of bedrooms where you have the slanted ceiling like you're up near the attic and he had this cool futon on the ground.
	He had a cool video game system and he had this sloping ceiling and I just thought, oh man, waking up on the top of the world in a sloping ceiling bedroom is about as cozy and cool as it could be and Yeah, so we would get together and we would drink Brock.
	I think it was called Brock.
	It was some high alcohol beer.
	But it didn't take too long.
	Again, it's a couple of weeks where I'm like, well, this isn't really worth it now, is it?
	Because I don't really enjoy getting drunk.
	It doesn't change me.
	I don't lose that, you know, hyperkinetic stampede of brain horses that's constantly roaming around my skull.
	So it doesn't really do much for me that way.
	It doesn't release me from any particular inhibitions.
	I mean, obviously, some social media companies recently believed that I should have had a few more inhibitions, but I barely drink now.
	But what would happen is I would feel unwell, I would sleep badly, and then in the morning I would have a hangover.
	And then, you know, you got that kind of bloodshot, squinty-eyed thing going on on Sunday.
	And then what happens is you kind of wait until...
	You know, mid-late afternoon before you feel any better.
	And you can't really do anything.
	At least I couldn't when I had a hangover.
	Like, I couldn't read.
	I couldn't program a computer.
	I couldn't really go for a walk because it was kind of bouncy.
	And it would make, you know, that little railway spike of slight pain that goes into your spine when your head bounces, you have a hangover.
	It's like, well, this isn't really worth it.
	There's not much of an upside.
	It's expensive. It makes me unwell.
	And it wipes out most of my Sunday.
	So basically I said, so I'm basically just voluntarily ingesting a poison.
	Like, would you really like a temporary flu for 24 hours, sir?
	Why, yes, I would. Can it at least be expensive and make me nauseous and sleep badly?
	Absolutely. No question at all.
	We can do all of that for you, and it's bad for your health in the long run.
	It's like, hmm, not that tough.
	Do you guys drink? Do you guys drink?
	Do we have any drinkers here? Do we have any drinkers here?
	I don't know. I guess we'll find out.
	So, yeah. Accept who you are.
	Work to be honest. It's a good thing to be as a whole.
	And recognize that if you got what you wanted, like if you're an introvert and you become, like, you know, somebody waves a magic wand, you become an extrovert, then what happens is you miss being an introvert.
	You miss being an introvert.
	For sure. Narcissists shrivel up without emotional supply from others.
	Well, yeah, okay, but narcissists and extroverts are not quite the same thing.
	A narcissist and an extrovert is not quite the same thing, in my obviously amateur opinion.
	So, a narcissist...
	An extrovert has to manipulate others, but an extrovert has to entertain others.
	Now, entertaining is much more of an act of generosity than sucking people dry and using them up to feed your own emotional weirdness, your own emotional vacuum.
	So a narcissist only gets a sense of power and efficacy by controlling and subjugating others.
	Right, so a narcissist will love putting you in an impossible situation.
	You know, they'll give you confusing instructions, if they're your boss, right?
	They'll give you confusing instructions, and they will get mad at you if either A, you ask for clarifications, or B, you get it wrong, which you inevitably do well when the instructions are vague, right?
	So... They put you in impossible situations because they need to feel that they are superior to you.
	Now, being an extrovert doesn't mean that you need to feel superior to others.
	It means that you wish to gain value by pleasing others, in a sense.
	I mean, an introvert is a slave to insecurity, and an extrovert is a slave to entertaining, right?
	So a narcissist, though, has to subjugate, has to bully, control, manipulate others, and feel a superiority not by any achievement of independent virtue, but by messing up the people around him or her.
	So that's an important distinction, I think.
	Can't wait for the parenting book.
	Ah, but you must.
	Extroverts are not necessarily pathological.
	No, no, that's right. No, that's right.
	That's right. I would say that...
	So, the pathology...
	Look...
	I like this stuff.
	I woke up like, hey, let's do a live stream.
	Normally I do a call-in show with donors on a Sunday morning, but I enjoyed my live stream yesterday and I was like, hey, let's have a live stream.
	I like this stuff.
	I like getting these questions.
	I think that I provide something valuable in response.
	All of that's really, really good.
	And Is that extroverted?
	I'm happy to sit at home and work on a book or read.
	Like, I don't need the audience, but I enjoy the audience.
	So I think, I hope it's a good, you know, Aristotelian balance between the introversion and the extroversion and so on.
	So I don't think it's a...
	It's pathological. I think it would be if I were doing self-destructive things just to maintain an audience, and I think it's fairly safe to say that I spent a few audience credits in The Pursuit of Truth over the last year or so, so I think that's well.
	Okay, do you have any opinions on Carl Jung personality typology versus the Big Five?
	Ah, that is a very good question.
	So, personality typographies, I mean, it's actually interesting.
	Something, it would be kind of cool, someday, it would be kind of cool for me to come up with my own personality.
	To me... The personality typography that really matters is commitment to objectivity, commitment to rationality, commitment to reality, right?
	That to me is the only personality typography that works.
	Introverted, extroverted doesn't really matter as far as I can find value in all of that kind of stuff.
	And the other personality typographies that, you know, openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and so on, I think those are interesting ways of looking at things, but it was not a philosopher who divided personality types up, and for me personality types are on a continuum called dedication to objectivity, dedication to reality, dedication to truth, dedication to reason.
	So, to me, human personalities are like, think of a fly's eye, but every little bulb is a tumor, right?
	Here we go. Here's your lovely analogy for a Sunday morning.
	So, think of a fly's eye.
	Every one of those little bubbles, those little embedded ping pong balls in the fly's eye is like a tumor, right?
	Now, human personalities tend to go insane.
	I mean, we can see this happening in society at the moment.
	Entropy is the natural state of things, right?
	You build a sand castle, tide comes in, it gets washed away.
	You build a building. Wind, rain, storms over time.
	You know, it's...
	I was on a hike the other day, came across a...
	The corner of a house.
	The corner of a house.
	And there was a couple of metal rings on the ground.
	And one of them, a tree had actually grown up through.
	And it was kind of choking the base of the tree, right?
	And this was probably 200 years old.
	And the only corner of the house was all that remained.
	And of course, because I'm a novelist and a creative guy, I can't help but think of...
	All of the hands that gathered all the stones and the mortar and put this house together, this old stone cottage from 150, 200 years ago.
	And, you know, where are they now?
	Why did they build it? Why is it here?
	Why was it abandoned? Why is it in the middle of nowhere?
	What happened? And all of that.
	Because, you know, you can't find these things out usually.
	At least I don't put the effort into it.
	But that house was built and it was new.
	And now there's just a corner of it.
	In the middle of nowhere. Nobody knows where it is.
	Nobody lives there, of course.
	And not far from there, there was a pond, and beside that pond, overgrown, was some changing rooms.
	So people obviously, maybe they built the pond, but they're swimming pond, and there were these changing rooms all overgrown with brambles and bushes and trees and all that, and, you know, all crushed in by the slow march of nature.
	But at one point, those changing rooms were We're built and we're fresh and we're new.
	And now they've just so...
	Entropy is the natural state of things, right?
	Very little, very little in the universe counters this entropy.
	You could say that youth, when you're growing...
	You are getting taller, stronger, more organized.
	You're kind of pushing back against it.
	And then from your early 20s, if you're a woman, your mid-20s, if you're a man, you just start to fade off.
	It's what Bob Dylan was talking about.
	Like he said years ago, he said, I can't do the creative things that I did in my youth.
	I can't do them anymore. There's other things I can do, but I can't do those things anymore.
	Me reading this novel that I wrote 20 years ago, that's great.
	I'm like, I wonder if I could do that now.
	I don't know. Well, I'm doing research on the French Revolution at the moment.
	Maybe I'll write a novel about the French Revolution because it's been a while since there's been a really great novel about the French Revolution.
	Quite a tale of two cities. So, entropy is the natural state of things.
	And all human beings, in the absence of philosophy, go slowly insane.
	I mean, this whole show is about fighting the inevitable entropy of insanity that characterizes the human mind.
	Because we are far more full of inner stimuli than external stimuli, and inner stimuli is not conditioned and subjugated of its own accord by external facts.
	So, I mean, just so, take an example, right?
	Most of us have been through this, right?
	I mean, there's a lot of males in the audience.
	Yeah, we've been through this, right? So, one-itis, right?
	The one-itis is you meet a woman, and she's just, she's perfect.
	She's the one. And your whole body, loins, heart, brain, neurological system, endorphin receptors, they all kind of align up like salmon in a swift current to just, this is the one.
	Which... Completely fudges up your negotiating position.
	One-itis is disastrous because you're in no position to negotiate anything, right?
	Because you can't negotiate anything, you can't get anything of quality.
	You know, like if you're starving to death and you've got to take this job, it's the only job that will pay you, and then you can't negotiate.
	They'll say, we'll pay you this.
	You're like, okay, because you can't afford anything.
	To walk away. And anything you can't afford to walk away from, you will lose anyway.
	It will be terrible.
	So one-itis is nature's way of saying, you suck, impregnate, you loser.
	Because you can't get anyone better, and then you end up handing over all your power To the woman who will look at you with contempt in general because you're a desperate begging dog who has no self-respect and you don't think you can do any better than anyone like her or with anyone like her.
	And that's just a terrible, terrible situation.
	So I just... One-itis is something you've got to fight tooth and nail.
	Now, I mean, I'm married close to 20 years and I love my wife with all my heart and she's perfect for me.
	But you don't start out with one-itis.
	It's... If I self-abase myself and say that I'm a pitiful worm who would turn into a prince on a single glance from you and all that kind of stuff, well, you don't want a woman who wants a man like that.
	Trust me. You don't want a woman who wants a man like that.
	Do not be in a begging position for these kinds of things because even if you get the woman, it won't last.
	It won't last. It's...
	A relationship is a stroll.
	I mean, if you get into this energetic sprint, you can't keep a sprint up.
	You can't. And sprinting after a woman, so anyway.
	So there's a situation where your inner stimuli, your desire for the woman, is completely eclipsing who she is as a person.
	There's some movie with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I think it is.
	And it's actually pretty funny.
	And I'm sure somebody will remember the name of it.
	It's with that...
	Oh, there's this woman.
	She's got a sister who's in bones.
	And she's got these giant eyes like a startled baby.
	Anyway, so she's like an anime character who can sing.
	And in the movie, he says, Oh, I love the way...
	That she sits and tugs at her ear.
	I'm just making things up, but something like that.
	Oh, I love the way that she sits and tugs at her ear while she's reading a book.
	And I love the way that she sways her feet back and forth when she lies face down on the bed.
	And I love this and I love that and the other.
	And then what happens is, a couple of months into their relationship, he's like, I cannot stand the fact that she keeps tugging at her ear while she's reading.
	And can't she keep her feet still on the bed?
	Like all the things that he, quote, loved about her, he now hates about her and it drives her crazy.
	And this happens, of course, a lot.
	When people say opposites attract, they do attract, but then they collide and recoil, right?
	And so opposites attract.
	So somebody who is an introvert says, oh, I fell in love with him because he's an extrovert.
	And, you know, he's got all this confidence in social situations and so on, right?
	And then after a while, she's like, oh, my God, this guy never slows down.
	He's always on. He's always desperate to go see people.
	He can't sit with me in peace.
	We can't have a reasonable conversation.
	He's always joining clubs and trying to become president of this, and we've got to go golfing with so-and-so.
	We've got to have these people over for dinner, and I'm bloody exhausted by it all.
	That's when you're attracted to people based upon things other than virtue.
	It's virtue, virtue, virtue that will sustain your relationships.
	Nothing else in any way, shape, or form will be able to do it.
	So, The inner stimuli of desire for the person eclipses the actual person.
	And then what happens is empiricism slowly kicks in, and you realize that the person you worshipped is not all she's cracked up to be, and then you turn on her, right?
	That's because you're... And now turning on her, you can't find that balance, right?
	So the guy shouldn't love her for tugging on her ear while she reads a book.
	That's a stupid reason to love someone.
	I mean, anything that could be faked, you can't fake virtue.
	Not for very long, anyway.
	But he shouldn't love her for that.
	And then he shouldn't hate her for that either, right?
	But the inner stimuli, oh, I love it when she tugs her ear and reads the book, is then followed by the internal stimuli, I hate her because she tugs her ear while she's reading a book, right?
	And so he pursues her because of his inner stimuli.
	She hasn't changed.
	She hasn't changed. All that's changed is that he's swung from one extreme to another.
	I love this about her. I hate this about her.
	She's the best thing ever. She's the worst thing ever.
	So the external stimuli hasn't changed, but the inner pendulum, right?
	It's insane. And you've got to have...
	If you want to control your mood swings, if you want to control moodiness or, for me, depression, anxiety, you've got to hook into external reality, truth, philosophy, reason.
	Because if this guy had access to philosophy, I mean, if this guy in the movie, Joseph Gordon-Levitt or whatever it was, if he were to call me up at a call-in show and say, Oh, I love this about this woman.
	She's... Right? Well, my question would be...
	What are her virtues? And I've asked this hundreds of times over the years in people who were infatuated with someone.
	Infatuation is when the reason Sandcastle is overwhelmed by the tsunami of hormones and the desire for our selected reproduction strategies, right?
	What are her virtues? Oh man, there's a pause that you don't want to ever have in your relationship, right?
	Somebody says, what are your husband's virtues?
	What are your girlfriend's virtues?
	Oh, you want to go out with this woman?
	What are her virtues? Is she strong?
	Is she kind? Is she moral?
	Is she honest? Is she committed to reality?
	Is she open?
	Is she good-natured, good-hearted?
	How does she weather adversity?
	Because aging is adversity.
	The storm of time takes us all down all too quickly.
	How's she going to weather adversity?
	Wow, she's really hot in a tank top.
	Yeah, what happens if you get sick?
	Is she going to get bored, frustrated, annoyed?
	Going to need to have someone else go out and admire her cleavage while you slowly expire in a docketed room?
	You don't want that!
	Get the cleavage! And it cleaves your heart in two.
	So, we all go insane over time.
	And just look around you.
	I mean, don't take what I'm saying as the truth, right?
	We all go insane over time.
	Particularly when we don't have anything to subjugate our mammalian will to, right?
	The will to power, the Nietzschean will to achieve and acquire resources regardless of consequences, regardless of universality, regardless of morality.
	Just get, get, get, own, own, own, take, take, take!
	Regardless. Of how it affects others.
	Capitalist, predatory, communist, predatory personality and mindset.
	To acquire, acquire, acquire, take, take, take, get, get, get, regardless of its effects on you, on the truth, on the world.
	The Pac-Man philosophy, just eat, eat, eat.
	Well, that's very bad for you, very bad for the world, very bad for your conscience, obviously, because Everyone we kill comes back to life in our minds, whether we kill them in an abstract economic sense, or we kill them in terms of harsh rejection, or we kill them in terms of spreading rumors and lies about them.
	I mean, I live deep in the conscience of the people who've lied about me, whether they like it or not.
	And my ghost does its work on them, whether they like it or not, whether I like it or not.
	So we used to have Christianity, right?
	We used to have religion to subjugate our mammal will, the will to power.
	We used to have Christianity to subjugate that angry will, that all-consuming will.
	That will is never enough.
	It's never enough, right? For people, it's never enough.
	The never-enough-ness is really, really destructive.
	You've got to have something that's enough.
	You've got to have something where you're satisfied.
	You've got to have something in life where it's good enough.
	It's good, and otherwise you're forever a questing beast heading off a cliff.
	So, we used to have Christianity.
	We used to have the Ten Commandments. We used to have the manifestation of the angry will to power in the form of Satan.
	We used to have the conscience animated in the form of Jesus.
	We used to have very powerful concepts that subjugated our power.
	Will to power. We don't have that anymore.
	Postmodernism took all of that down.
	Postmodernism separated us from the only agency which can blunt our ever-growing fly-eye tumor insanity.
	The only thing that is the chemo for the tumor of anti-rationality that grows in all of us is reality, is truth, right?
	And postmodernism cut us off from that.
	Post-modernism says there should be no reason whatsoever to restrain your will to power.
	Christianity says, well, there's very good reasons to restrain your will to power, and here's what they are, boom, there's ten of them, and that's what we should do.
	But post-modernism, now, of course, my goal has been to bring philosophy in as the way to restrain, to bring to heal the will to power within all of us.
	Because the will to power...
	I'll throw another analogy on you.
	It's not much of an analogy.
	It's a pretty obvious one. So the will to power is like the hunger of prey, right?
	So think of rabbits, right?
	And rabbits just eat and breed and eat and breed and eat and breed and eat and breed, right?
	And they can have babies every, what, six to eight weeks and a whole bunch of them and so on, right?
	And they'll just eat until they strip...
	The grasslands bear, and then they starve to death.
	So the wills of power, it helps the individual genetics, but destroys the collective genetics, right?
	I mean, if you look at, like, the left people, the leftists, the hard leftists, more government spending, more growth and regulations, more government power, more control, and so on, right?
	And, you know, they can make a lot of money.
	And individually, their genetics do quite well.
	Their kids go to good schools, and they are in a safe neighborhood and all that.
	But collectively, they destroy society.
	So, like, each individual bunny is like, mmm, yummy tasty grass, mmm, yummy tasty sex, mmm, yummy tasty babies, mmm, yummy tasty grass, right?
	This hamster wheel of repetition.
	And their individual genetics flourish because of that, but because everybody's individual genetics are flourishing in the rabbit world, they run out of food and all starve to death.
	So, it doesn't really work very well, does it?
	Now, if, of course...
	And, of course, the thing is, too, that when you get a whole bunch of rabbits...
	It attracts a whole bunch of predators, right?
	And the welfare state breeds a whole bunch of sheep, which attracts a whole bunch of predators called the communists, right?
	It's inevitable, right?
	So, restraint of the will to power, the will to gain resources no matter the consequences, the will to restrain that has to come from somewhere, and it used to come from Religion, it used to come from God, it used to come from Christianity, and in many ways in a very, very positive way. Where does it come from in the absence of religion?
	Hopefully philosophy, but I mean there's a reason I'm kicked off social media platforms, right?
	Because I am opposing the gathering of the will to power.
	Because I recognize that my individual genetic transmission in the form of being a father doesn't really matter that much if society goes to hell in a handbasket and currency collapses and roaming gangs of, you know, Weimar-style street youth are prowling the neighborhood.
	It really doesn't matter, you know, whether I took really, really great care of my daughter's health when she was younger or if society falls apart, right?
	But there, of course, the will to power...
	It's something we thirst for.
	It's something we desire. We're genetically, genetically programmed to pursue power.
	I've talked about this before.
	There's lots of experiments with bonobo monkeys.
	When they climb up the social hierarchy, usually through aggression and domination, they get endorphin release in their system.
	They get the ultimate cocaine drug of the brain, which is supposed to motivate you to do a whole bunch of stuff.
	So the pursuit of power, the pursuit of control, the pursuit of dominance, Is programmed into us as something that we desperately want to seek and feel fantastic when we get it.
	Now what counters that? Because we don't want to live like rabbits and wolves.
	I hope not anyway, right?
	What counters that is philosophy.
	So yeah, the will to power, we all go insane.
	We're addicted to resource acquisition.
	We're addicted to dominance.
	We're addicted to control. We're addicted to all of this stuff.
	Physically. Physically. It's the biggest drug there is.
	The biggest drug there is, is the pursuit of power.
	Which, it would be blunted in a stateless society by not having access to the ultimate dealer called the state, but that's a topic for another time.
	So, everybody goes insane over time.
	If, if, They don't have reality and reason pushing back against them.
	Or religion, Christianity, something that limits their will to power.
	I mean, there are other religions that openly pursue that will to power.
	We want to rule. We want to dominate.
	We want to control. We'll move here.
	We'll have lots of kids. We'll take control of the legislature.
	Whatever, right? That's the will to power that's baked into certain religious concepts or certain ideologies as well.
	So, recognizing that everybody goes insane, that the human personality is a constant and ever-growing set of crazy tumors, is really, really important, and you've got to stay healthy.
	Another way of looking at it, of course, is let's say that you knew nothing about nutrition, and you just eat whatever you want.
	I mean, it'd be pretty nice, right?
	It'd be pretty nice to just eat whatever you want and not exercise or whatever it is, right?
	It'd be great.
	So that's your immediate will to power, your will to pleasure, your will to pursue that which gives you pleasure.
	And power gives us great pleasure.
	Oh, it gives us great pleasure.
	I mean, I have steadfastly refused to accept power In what I do here.
	People will say, this just happened on Friday night.
	A guy called in. It's a great show.
	I'll be coming out in a day or two.
	It's called From Vengeance to Love.
	He wanted vengeance against someone who'd actually done him the greatest good in the world.
	And he, like so many people who call me up, say, what should I do?
	I will not tell you.
	I will not tell you what to do because there's no point...
	Taking whoever dominated you in the past and replacing it with me, telling you what to do.
	I will not tell you what to do.
	Because I know that that's a very heady thing to do.
	I know, oh my gosh, I've got these great ideas, and you should do this, and you should do that, and I've got people following me, and they'll do what I say, and that's terrible.
	That leads me away.
	That's a tumor, right? That leads me away from reality and objectivity.
	And of course, my whole purpose in pursuit of free will and self-autonomy is not to tell people what to do.
	Of course, right? It's to give them the tools to think for themselves.
	And when you get a big, powerful new piece of information, that's the last time you should decide what it is that you should do.
	Because you've got to incorporate and understand and absorb this new insight or this new information.
	So I don't tell...
	People want to do, never have, never will, because somebody offers you cocaine.
	Somebody says, I will subjugate my will to what you say.
	That's tempting me with a great sin in the realm of philosophy.
	I can't be into free will and then say, do what I say, right?
	It's a very, very bad idea.
	It's a very bad idea. So, yeah.
	Stay rational. Stay sane.
	And recognize that everybody's going to go...
	So, if they don't...
	If people aren't dedicated to reason, truth, and reality...
	And it could be, again, through religion, specifically Christianity...
	So, if people aren't dedicated to that...
	They will go insane over time.
	Guaranteed. Because insanity is the entropy of the human mind.
	And insanity is when...
	You no longer or have a much lower ability to blunt or reason with or counter your internal desires with external facts and reality.
	Addiction, of course, is a form of insanity in this way, in my view, right?
	Because your internal desire for whatever satisfied your addiction in the moment is destructive for you as a whole.
	But you will pursue your inner desires in the absence of.
	And people then will only usually get out of it when they hit crop bottom or everyone says, I'm not going to enable, I'm going to have nothing to do with you.
	Like the intervention style, everyone says, I won't have anything to do with you if you continue with this addiction and so on.
	And then there's an immediate negative consequence that overwhelms, at least temporarily, their pursuit of whatever drug they are after.
	However attractive, appealing, enticing, charismatic, seductive people may be in the moment, that's why I say to people on dates, man, forget talking about the weather.
	Forget all of that crap. On dates, what you want to do is you want to talk about actual important stuff in the world, in life.
	Do these people actually have a dedication to reality, to truth, to reason, to evidence?
	How do they condition their...
	How do you negotiate with people?
	You can't negotiate with people who only work with inner stimuli, who only are focused on their own inner stimuli.
	You can't negotiate with them because you are much less important than their inner stimuli.
	And if their inner stimuli don't want to negotiate with them and they don't have any way of reasoning with their inner stimuli, they'll just...
	Keep dominating you, or maybe, if they're afraid, subjugating themselves to you, but you'll never exist on an even playing field.
	You'll never exist in the same game at the same time.
	Dominance or submission is no way to run a relationship in any way, shape or form.
	All right. I hope that helps.
	It's funny. I am a long-form kind of guy.
	I am a long-form kind of guy.
	Yes, sorry. Somebody asked me if I'm taking questions on another platform.
	I am! Ah, Schole, Schole M. Let's see here.
	Oh, sorry, I'm on wipe for those.
	Let's have a look here. It's good to study Nietzsche, but not actually follow him.
	That is a good way to put it.
	That is a good way to put it.
	All right, what have we got here? Yeah, and look, it is important to be fascinated by the opposites.
	Absolutely. It is important to be fascinated by it.
	See, being fascinated by an opposite gives you a choice.
	So, I was shy when I was little, but I was quite fascinated by people who could get up and talk in front of people.
	And I was particularly impressed by improv.
	Right. I was particularly impressed by people who could, I mean, to do a prepared speech, to look things up, maybe have a PowerPoint and so on.
	I mean, I do those and those are fine.
	But I've always been really most impressed, not by comedians, but by, you know, the whose line is it anyway kind of improv situation.
	And when I was in theater school, we did a lot of improv.
	Yeah. And it really takes a lot of self-trust to surf at this kind of level.
	And I think improv-ing these answers, so to speak, as I'm doing, is some of the best things that you can do with your mind.
	So yeah, being fascinated by opposites is important because it then allows you to widen your possibility of action.
	Don't be fascinated by opposites in a way where you say, oh, well, they can do it.
	I can't. I'm a loser or whatever.
	That's terrible, right? But be fascinated by opposites in a way of like, well, if they can do it, maybe I could do it.
	You could stretch opposites. Your possibilities, because that's where free will is, right?
	Your free will is in your possibilities.
	And every conclusion you come to limits your free will.
	Now, some conclusions you come to are healthy, right?
	I'm not going to be a hair model nor a ballerina, so that's healthy for me to sort of recognize that.
	But other possibilities are not fixed.
	They're not in the rear view.
	They are possible for you to attain, and you want to be fascinated by those possibilities.
	Gender relations are in a terrible shape these days, says Noah.
	I'm so glad I'm not seeking a mate.
	Yeah, I was just thinking 500 Days of Summer.
	That's the movie. Thank you. I was just thinking about this the other day.
	When I was in university, so a brief timeline, I got out of high school a semester early, and I went to work Up in Northern Ontario, Gopana Prospector.
	I did that for about a year and a half.
	I went to university. I spent another...
	Yeah, about a year and a half.
	And then I did another summer after my first year of university.
	And I went to the Glendon campus of York University.
	I did English Literature and I did two years there.
	And then I auditioned for the National Theatre School because I was doing a lot of acting and had a really, really good director and I really, really enjoyed the acting.
	And then I went to the National Theatre School.
	I went there for the first year and it was really interesting.
	So the first semester they loved me.
	I went there for acting and playwriting.
	The first semester they loved me and they said, oh man, you're such a good actor.
	Like, forget the playwriting thing. Just be an actor.
	You're great. And I was like, yeah.
	And then I started getting into political discussions and they just hated me because they realized it was a pretty socialist communist enclave there as the arts tend to be.
	And, yeah, they just kind of hated me after that.
	And I went back, but I didn't end up finishing the second year because I really wasn't doing much.
	I was doing some playwriting.
	I remember they gave me Plato's apology to dramatize for the stage.
	And I thought I wrote an absolutely beautiful piece and they hated it.
	And my writing teacher then said, well, I would write it like this.
	And I read his piece and I was like, well, that's terrible.
	It's really harsh.
	It doesn't catch the beauty of philosophy or the wondrousness of the allegories and so on.
	I mean, to me, Plato's Apology is a love story between Plato and his mentor and sorrow.
	And there was a lot of deep and powerful emotions in it.
	And his writing was like kind of harsh and callous and off the cuff and off the hip, shoot from the hip kind of stuff.
	And I was like, okay, so I'm not doing much acting.
	I don't like my teacher.
	He doesn't like me. They don't like me.
	Forget this. Like, I just don't want to, like, why would I come back for another year of this?
	So anyway, I left before the end of my second year and worked, and then I went back and finished my undergraduate career.
	In history at McGill.
	And then I took a year off because I was out of money and I worked.
	And then I did my master's degree at the University of Toronto and had such an unusual thesis, I suppose, that it took me months past everyone else who graduated.
	I finally got my A. And, I mean, a lot of this was battling the lefties, right?
	A lot of this was putting my hand up, disagreeing, fighting with, because I'm like, I want to get my money's worth here.
	Like, I'm investing my time.
	I don't want to just absorb everyone else's ideas and replicate them back, and that just seems like as much creativity as the plant and the evasion of the body snatchers replicating Donald Sutherland, right?
	So, I had all of these fights, and good fights, I think.
	I was on the debating team, vice president of the debating team, in fact.
	I came in sixth in Canada the first year that I tried.
	I had a real knack for the debating stuff, which I didn't have in high school, but I definitely had later.
	But that had something to do with the improv and the voice training.
	I took a lot of movement classes, and the Alexandra technique in theater school helped me a lot with sort of posture and breathing and connection.
	There was some really, really good stuff in theater school, regardless of the other stuff that wasn't so good for me.
	I had all of these conflicts with the lefty professors and There was no, I never felt any sense of danger.
	I never felt, oh my gosh, you know, I'm going to get reported.
	I'm going to get a complaint.
	I'm going to get doxxed.
	I'm going to, like, I don't know, whatever it was.
	Like, there was never, I was like, okay, this is a good battle.
	It's an important battle. I enjoy the battle.
	But there was never any sense of like, and this is going to end really badly.
	But now I think that there are so many lefties in universities, I don't even think that's possible anymore.
	And, of course, this is back before, like, the racial stuff came in, where if you're, you know, how the autocorrect should work, if it was truth in advertising, it should autocorrect, like, anti-communists should just autocorrect a white supremacist, because that's, like, the new thing, right?
	So if you are anti-socialist and you're white, then you are silenced because of white privilege, and there isn't even a debate, right?
	There isn't even a debate. To have the debate is somehow racist, right?
	And that just wasn't the case.
	At all when I was growing up.
	Now I could see this, you know, it's like Indiana Jones with that, you know, you get your degree like the little bag of, like the little prize he gets at the beginning of the first Indiana Jones movie.
	Then he runs away and there's this big giant boulder rolling after him.
	So I'm like, get the degree.
	Political correctness is coming.
	I've got to get out of here. The arrows and the guy throws his fishing rod away and we fly away.
	Escaped. Got the last sane degree in higher academia.
	So... Yeah, it's bad out there, for sure.
	And men and women are being taught to hate each other.
	It's really, really, really terrible.
	It's really terrible. And I'm glad I'm not dating.
	And I get these messages when I say, oh, just do this.
	It's like, hey, man, you don't understand.
	I get that. Like, I'm not out there.
	I'm not out there. So my suggestion has always been...
	Try to become a little bit prominent, you know, write a blog or create a vlog or do something that's going to make you a little bit prominent.
	And then if you get known, particularly for ideas or arguments that you put forward that hopefully are rational, then you will have more of your choice of people.
	If you become prominent, you will gain a community and you may then have more of your choice of who to date.
	And hopefully they'll be attracted to you for your values.
	Alright, couple more questions.
	On we in relationships, opposites attract is a fallacy.
	Research supports like, attracts like.
	Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure.
	Oh yeah, well we started off.
	I wouldn't love my girl as much if she wasn't as conservative as me.
	Yeah. If she was a liberal, I would be fascinated for a season, and then I would burn her at the stake.
	Well, it seems a little extreme.
	But see, leftist women, I remember being, oh gosh, a little story time, I guess.
	So, 1999.
	Yeah, that print song's in all of our head now, right?
	It's a virus, it's a virus! But 1999, I was still in the business world.
	This was half a decade before I started publishing articles and taking the podcast route.
	But so 1999, I was still in the business world and talk about Strange situation.
	So I was going to China.
	We were doing business with China back when it was really opening up.
	And there was real optimism that China was going to become more free market and more free.
	And it turns out, funny story, they went capitalist so that they could control the world by allowing or denying access to the Chinese market.
	Funny, funny story. Anyway, so we were partnered.
	My company was partnered with a bigger company.
	Environmental company.
	And I had to go to China for about two weeks for business to demonstrate, to negotiate, to work with a variety of Chinese partners.
	And so I... I was at the airport and I was supposed to be flying out with two other men who were experienced in the Chinese market and knew what the heck was going on in China.
	So I was at the airport and they weren't there.
	They weren't there.
	Didn't show up, get on the plane, head to China.
	No one there to guide me.
	I don't know what the heck was going on, right?
	I don't remember. It was two good Chinese movies.
	At least I had a decent seat. Anyway, so fly Toronto to Vancouver, Vancouver to Beijing.
	Arrive there. I'm at the airport.
	Nobody's there. I finally get a message that one of them had gotten sick.
	The other one had an emergency of some kind that they couldn't come.
	Okay. So, I make my way to the hotel.
	This is all before, you know, big cell phones and certainly cell phones in China wouldn't have worked if they were North American, so.
	And I remember being in Beijing.
	God, it was cold. I wanted to walk to Tiananmen Square and it was so unbelievably cold.
	That I would walk and I'd have to duck into the hotel lobbies just from time to time because I was just so cold.
	It was a good trip.
	It was a very interesting trip for me.
	It was my first time in China and it was kind of a little bit like going back in time because they were still into the three beer lunches back then in China.
	And so the business would be like, hey, have another beer.
	And I'm, again, not much of a drinker, so I'd have like a sip, you know, here and there.
	But it was kind of like going back to the Mad Men 1953 martini lunch situation.
	And I remember driving out to a research and development facility to show off the software that I'd written.
	And we did have a great meeting, very good natured, very positive people, really, really liked just about everyone I met there.
	And I remember it was really decrepit place because it's China, right?
	And it was kind of out of the main city.
	And I remember they challenged me to a game of ping pong, also known as challenging me to a game of stereotypes.
	And my God, they were good at ping pong.
	And it was really annoying too because I'm fairly good at ping pong, but I don't do spins really.
	I'm just like I'm an honest Anglo-Saxon smash it hard kind of guy.
	I'll do spins in tennis till the cows come home rotating.
	But they were like all these spins and it's like...
	Oh, I don't know where the ball's going to go, and it's really annoying.
	And, yeah, they toasted my wife's body behind pretty well.
	But, of course, you know, they're out there.
	What are they going to do? Play some ping pong.
	It's pretty cheap, right? So, yeah, and, of course, East Asian reflexes are something else, right?
	You can see that in StarCraft and all that.
	So I went from there.
	I was home for one day and then a friend of mine and I went to Morocco and we did a tour of Morocco for, we were there for New Year's Eve 2000 and we thought it'd be a pretty cool thing to do.
	And it was really, it was a neat experience basically to go from one place to another where I didn't speak the language and couldn't read any of the signs even in sort of Pigden kind of stuff.
	And in China, too, it was kind of neat.
	You go to the markets, and you would have to take a calculator with you, or they would have a calculator, because we couldn't negotiate, but they knew the numbers, right?
	Because I didn't speak Mandarin or Cantonese or whatever, and they didn't speak English.
	So we would just, you know, I want to buy something, and they would put a number in, and I would type, I would put a number in, they would put a number in, and we'd find something in the middle where we could actually, and I was like, man, these guys are good at this market stuff.
	They're going to be a force to be reckoned with.
	And that was pretty wild.
	I really can't honestly remember why I started telling that story.
	My apologies. Something to do with history.
	Oh, never mind. Oh, well.
	It'll come to me at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I'll post about it somewhere.
	All right. Let's see here.
	Oh, yes! Oh, my gosh!
	I remember now. I remember now.
	In Morocco! That's right.
	In Morocco, I had dinner with a guy...
	Who'd shot a David Bowie video.
	And I remember thinking like, A, that's kind of cool.
	And B, this was like 12 years ago.
	And the fact that he's telling this story still.
	Don't ever be that guy who's got like the one cool story.
	And that's it. You know, yeah, he shot a David Bowie video.
	Great. You know, that's fantastic.
	It's 12 years ago. Anything else?
	Anything else? No.
	You know, like that old story.
	Oh, I can dine out for years on this story or whatever, right?
	It's like, don't, don't. You know, keep having new experiences.
	Keep doing cool new things and all that.
	But in Morocco... I met a woman, very attractive woman, and had invited her out for dinner and she was, you know, telling me all about how great communism was.
	And she... I don't know if you...
	There's a certain kind of earthy, Erica Young, creepy frankness, at least to me, to leftist women, like this mammalian disregard for the sanctity of sexuality and basically just splaying loins on a table like she's some fetishizing gynecologist or something like that.
	And there was this real open offer of, you know, let's bang each other like a gong till the sun comes up.
	Now... I guess back then I was still in my 20s.
	And, you know, I'm not going to lie.
	I'm not going to lie.
	You know, banging a pretty girl like a gong till the sun came up under the stars of Morocco on New Year's Eve of the millennium.
	Seemed like a pretty good thing at the time.
	But I had to, I was getting dicknapped.
	Getting dicknapped, that's being kidnapped by your penis, right?
	I was getting dicknapped, and I had to give myself my mental...
	I don't know, what should we...
	Margaret Thatcher in a bikini ice punch to the nads, right?
	To sort of steer myself away from that.
	Because there is, along with radical ideology, comes promises of...
	A lot of times comes promises of sexual activity that would, you know, blister the brain of Larry Flint, right?
	And that's something that kind of floats around as well.
	So it's the R-selected thing, right?
	And it is, of course, if you have to offer sex along with your ideology, then your ideology is somewhat suspect or wanting.
	But that's how a lot of guys get lured into this kind of stuff, right?
	Denial of sex, access to easy sex, that's some women's philosophy for sure.
	Are you as creeped out as I am at the parallels between the Russian Revolution and what's happening now?
	Well, it's the same ideology, right?
	It's the same ideology for sure.
	Yeah, it is the case.
	See, basically what happens is this.
	Freedom produces wealth.
	And then wealth produces a lot of people.
	And a lot of those people, because of the bell curve, can't compete.
	And so what they do is they then create...
	Because freedom produces wealth disparities, right?
	Some people are crazy more productive than others.
	And so the people who don't have as much or don't have enough, they can either work hard to get more, which works a whole lot of times, or they can present themselves as victims and play upon the pathological altruism and guilt of the successful in order to gain resources through the power or they can present themselves as victims and play upon the pathological altruism And that way, the whole death spiral kind of goes from there, right?
	Which is why conversations about IQ and stuff like that are forbidden, because, you know, It's tough to go to people who aren't succeeding and saying, yeah, that's tough.
	Some of it's your fault, some of it's not your fault, but it's important to remember that the people who are producing a lot are actually creating wealth, they're creating jobs, and they're creating successful economic situations.
	For people like you, you won't ever be able to compete with them, but...
	Maybe you can't be the lead singer, but you can be a roadie.
	But if you are the lead singer and you're not a good singer, there won't be any band, there won't be any music industry, and even the roadies won't get a job, right?
	So trying to explain that kind of stuff would really help, which is why you can't learn about free market economics in school.
	And you could tell these kinds of things to kids.
	And you could give them IQ tests.
	And, you know, again, it's not deterministic.
	I mean, there's lots of things that you can do with wisdom.
	There's lots of things you can do with willpower.
	And, you know, the tortoise versus the hare, if you work hard.
	And somebody who works hard will usually outcompete somebody who's smarter but doesn't work hard.
	And so there's lots of choice, but it's a way of undoing the resentment.
	Because when you get wealth disparity, you get resentment.
	And when you get resentment, which used to be fought by Christianity with material wealth doesn't matter and the rich are going to be punished after death and the meek shall inherit the earth and Jesus was poor and sell everything you own and give your money to the poor and all of that.
	So Christianity used to fight that envy, which is why the free market took root in a Christian society, because you could allow for that wealth disparity without bringing the resentful rage of the less successful against the more successful.
	But right now, of course, because we have wealth disparity and some of that wealth disparity is legitimately unjust, like it's kind of tough to compete economically with the people who can print and borrow whatever money they want, right?
	So some of that economic disparity, the wealth disparity, some of it's horribly unjust, some of it is...
	Good for society, right?
	Because economic disparity means, in a free market sense, it means that the people who are best able to create wealth have the most wealth.
	That's kind of what you want, right?
	I mean, you think of this, just take aside the controversies about COVID vaccine and so on, but let's just say it's good and it's safe and helpful and does the job and all of that.
	So the people who are best able To produce the most and the safest vaccines should be the ones who get the resources they need to do that, right?
	If you have two labs, one can produce 10,000 vaccines a day, one can produce 1,000 vaccines a day, well, the one that can produce 10,000 vaccines a day should be the one who gets the raw materials, the resources, the labor, the manpower and so on to produce those vaccines.
	I mean, of course, right? The farmer who's best able to grow the most crops should be the one who owns the most land because that way you'll get the most crops.
	And, you know, if economic disparity bothers you enormously, it doesn't bother me that much.
	But if political disparity, that bothers me.
	You know, the fact that some people can counterfeit at will, the trillions of dollars and other people go to jail.
	Or, you know, I mean, what did George Floyd got arrested for passing a $20 bill that was wet?
	Oh, he was counterfeiting. That's really bad.
	It's like... But he was counterfeiting a counterfeited bill.
	Fiat currency is counterfeited anyway.
	It's not based on anything, and you're forced to use it.
	So, some wealth disparity is unjust, some is just.
	But where it's just, it's actually helpful for the economy, but kids aren't taught that, so they look at wealthy people.
	And they blur together.
	Well, so they're taught that it's the free market wealthy people who are the enemy.
	The politically wealthy people like the Obamas and the Clintons and so on, they're not the issue, right?
	And so you're taught that the free market people have...
	Wealth because they've stolen from you and you rouse that resentment and counter-arguments are generally not allowed because they want to create these divisions.
	And, you know, as the old saying goes, a nation of sheep will beget wolves for leaders.
	And the more that you create resentful, dependent, inactive, upset people, the more they can be manipulated into a raging mob that can...
	Well, what is it? The recent riots done a trillion dollars worth of damage...
	In America, and maybe it'll be a trillion at some point, but it's the biggest disaster to destroy American property, I think, in just about history.
	All right. Another couple of questions.
	Let's see here. Feminism dividing male and female, as long as you can remember, divide and conquer is their technique.
	Sure. Absolutely.
	It's also a form of So, in a free market, smart people would generally have more babies than less smart people, and given the genetics of intelligence, that would make society smarter as a whole.
	And, of course, remember, too, I just want to mention this as well.
	So, in the West, particularly in the UK, in England, and other places as well, there was a regular, and I don't necessarily approve of this, but there are these effects, right?
	There was this regular... People who were very violent and were found to be guilty of very violent crimes In a court of law were generally put to death, and this could affect 1% of the population sometimes in a given year.
	So there was this constant shaving down of this type of personality structure, and that had some effect on, I think, the religious war.
	So the people who were most committed to religious fanaticism tended to both fight and kill and die in these kinds of wars.
	I think that had some effect on bringing about the Enlightenment, whether we like it or not.
	Now, I don't want any of this to be happening violently, which is why I do this philosophy show, but that is hard to avoid.
	Ruth Ginsburg died. Should we try to reduce the power of the court versus shove it down the lefty's throat?
	I don't know. I'm not really doing much on politics anymore.
	But I will say this. I do believe that China is going to move on Taiwan.
	America is going to support Taiwan, and things could get quite...
	Quite exciting. Question.
	Do you believe mental health is real and or overly stated?
	No, I believe in mental health.
	Yeah. I mean, it's really tough to be a...
	It's really tough to be a...
	Sorry about that. I forgot to turn it silent.
	It's really tough to be a philosopher, which is saying there's better and worse ways of thinking without believing in mental health, right?
	It's like being a nutritionist, believing there's better and worse ways to eat without believing in nutritional or digestive health.
	So, yeah, I do. And you can look at my library on LBRY, or BitChute, or increasingly now, brighteon.com, and I've got just mental health, mental illness.
	I've got a whole bunch of videos on those.
	So... All right.
	Shall we...
	Yeah, I should probably close it off.
	Yeah, it's been a good chat.
	Listen, I really do appreciate everyone dropping by.
	A great pleasure to chat with you guys.
	And please don't forget to drop by...
	FreeDomain.com forward slash donate.
	FreeDomain.com forward slash donate.
	I suppose you have...
	Hey, it's going to be my birthday on Thursday.
	I'm going to be 54 on the 24th.
	So, yeah. A little birthday gift would be fantastic.
	Oh, we can do that.
	How interesting. But can you hide them?
	That I don't know. Alright.
	So, look at that.
	You can show... I didn't even realize this.
	You can show the questions.
	But I never know how to hide them.
	Anyway. Oh, hide messages.
	There we go. There's a button for that, too.
	There's an app for that, too.
	All right. freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
	Obviously quite important in these days of massive turmoil and deplatforming.
	freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	Thank you so much, everyone, for dropping by today.
	A real pleasure to chat with you guys.
	Great, great questions. And have yourselves a wonderful Sunday.
	I will talk to you soon. Lots of love from up here.
	Take care. Bye. Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest Free Domain show on philosophy.
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