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Jan. 18, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:53:36
"27 YEARS, NO DATES!" Freedomain Call In
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Good morning, my lovely friends at Reason.
How are you doing today? It is Sunday, January the 17th, 2021.
I'm old enough that it still feels like a science fiction year.
And do you ever do this?
I do. So, in my life, when I was younger, I would sort of think ahead, right?
What would things be like?
What would I be doing?
What would the world be like in 2021?
And, you know, certainly the world as a whole has not played out the way that I expected, but I would say that my life has played out as well, if not better, than I expected.
I didn't get what I wanted in many ways, like professionally.
I mean, personally, I have everything a man could possibly dream of, but professionally, it didn't work out the way that I wanted because what I wanted was to be in the art world.
I wanted to be a playwright, a novelist, an actor, a director, all of that stuff.
And as it turned out, that's not what the world needed.
And for those of you who have not checked out my novel, Almost, I mean, I'd like to come over and read it to you until you get into it.
But failing that, you can just go to freedomain.com forward slash almost.
It's a regular old feed.
You can just put it into any podcast catcher anywhere, iTunes, whatever you like, and listen to it that way.
It's a great book.
I've been re-listening.
To it, here and there.
I mean, it's funny, you know, because when you hear yourself recorded back, sometimes it's like, do I really sound like that?
But I really love the reading, and I really love the characters, and the writing is great.
It was so vivid for me.
I dreamt about that whole novel.
It took a year of my life, carved it out, and wrote that book, and I'm immeasurably pleased that I did.
I think it's going to go down as...
Literature in the long run.
But yeah, you can get it for free at freedomain.com forward slash almost.
But yeah, we don't have jetpacks.
We're not going to Mars. There are no floating cities.
We do have massive amounts of immigration.
And unfortunately, that has, I think, given the cost of immigrants, has toasted to some degree some of the potential that we had There is, of course, I think it was Edward Dutton who wrote At Our Wits End.
It's a great book to check out about declining intelligence.
It is understandable, tragic.
There's a humane element to it as well, which is very interesting.
But, yeah, you should do this.
I mean, you should say, where do I want to be in a year?
And then a year comes along, and you should say, am I there?
Try not to live... Day by day.
Try not to live just doing your thing.
And, you know, to be fair, listen, I mean, I've been playing some Among Us lately, which is actually a great deal of fun.
But video games can be the great time sink that strips us of ambition and progress.
Enjoy them.
Obviously, I like them, but be a little aware of just what they can do in terms of taking your life away and also giving you a sense of achievement when you haven't actually achieved anything.
Now, I play with my daughter, which is great fun, and she is so good at that game.
It is genuinely amazing.
I'm proud and vaguely alarmed.
And she will give me coaching sessions and she will teach me the things to do.
And she comes up with solutions to problems in the game that I didn't even know were problems.
And then even if I had known they were problems, I wouldn't necessarily have come up with them as solutions.
But she is very good at that game.
And it's very impressive and humbling.
It's always a good thing to be humbled once in a while.
So, last thing I wanted to mention, I was reading this article this morning about this woman who was saying, oh, we were all so careful.
We were all so careful, and yet my whole family got COVID anyway.
And, you know, she was socially distancing.
They were wearing masks at all times.
Everywhere they went, she was washing her hands for at least 20 seconds, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And the whole family got COVID. And she's frustrated and she's confused.
Now, I don't know, of course, how she got COVID. She probably doesn't either.
But one thing she did say was that she was still sending her kids to school.
Now, that is a really fascinating thing.
You know, I mean, of course, a study came out recently that said it does lockdowns versus voluntary measures such as those adopted by places like Sweden and Florida, I think, is pretty open.
But lockdowns don't change the trajectory of infections versus non-lockdowns.
And it's a pretty extensive study.
That's been published.
And of course, now that the Democrats are in, I assume that the lockdowns will start to be opened up.
And people will, instead of being shamed for going out, they will now be shamed for being paranoid and not growing up and accepting the difficulty of the situation.
But the lockdowns don't really seem to be doing much, and I think one of the reasons why is that I don't know, and let me know if you know, I don't know if any studies have really been done tracking the transmissibility of children in schools, right? Because, of course, you have children who may come from a household where there's an infection.
They go to school. They are interacting with other children, of course, right?
And they're in the same environment.
And, you know, kids plus masks.
Oh, it's gross. I can't stand the mask myself.
I just can't stand the mask.
But that would seem to me that she's like, oh, I'm doing everything I can.
It's like, well, why don't you homeschool then?
Because if you homeschool... Kids ain't going to be out there courting the virus, right?
So saying, I'm washing my hands, but I'm sending my child out into the world with hundreds of other children in a fairly enclosed environment, but I'm doing everything I can.
It's like, well, I mean, technically you're not.
Doing everything you can would be to keep your kids home, would seem to me.
The other thing that I find quite amusing is that there's this mission now Going to Wuhan.
Now, they were originally denied.
I think it's a World Health Organization mission.
They were originally denied getting into Wuhan or getting into China as a whole.
But now, you see, they're going to China to try and figure out the causes of the virus, right, of COVID. I wonder where did it come from?
Man, talk about a cold case.
I mean, what kind of weird theater is this?
Do they imagine that the Chinese government is going to be open and transparent and has kept all the records and is willing to issue a mea culpa and...
Come on.
I mean, it's so bizarre.
Now, of course, for China, not only is international reputation pretty important in this situation, but also, of course, there could be significant financial ramifications.
That if China was found culpable of either if it was the case that it was a lab culture or a lab development that spilled or was released and whether that was the case or not has some relevance but of course the fact that China suppressed All of the doctors who tried to report about it and banned domestic travel while facilitating it internationally and suppressed reports and so on.
And by toasting the Huanan seafood market, destroyed evidence.
I mean, you try that if you're potentially guilty of a crime.
So, but if they were found guilty of this, then they could be liable for reparations, which would be considerable and a huge economic challenge for China.
I mean, not that they...
but imagine they would ever pay it.
That's for Western countries post-World War I, World War II. England was still paying off the debts of freeing slaves up until the 1980s.
But... It's just a weird kind of theater that's going on at the moment.
What are they expecting to achieve out there?
I suppose it has something to do with, well, if there isn't a commission, then it looks bad.
So let's pretend to have some sort of commission that's going to go out and figure out the origins of this thing.
Truly strange, truly strange.
All right, but let's get to you, my lovely listeners, and let's talk about what's on your mind, and let's see if we can't put the horsepower of philosophy to work on the wet earth plows of your life for the fertility of your future flowering.
There's a stretched out metaphor, but let's move in.
James, I'm all yours. Alright, so first up today, we have a caller who writes, I have been single, without reciprocated romantic relations since I'm 18, and I'm now 45.
This is a thing that has negatively affected me most of my life.
I had a childhood from which I got anxiety, depression, and a low self-esteem.
I've lived alone since I'm 24, but I've almost always been emotionally alone and sad since my parents divorced when I was 4.
I studied and work in a field where it's almost only men, aircraft engines maintenance.
I don't really like to go out, especially alone.
I still made a bachelor degree at part-time, a major in history and a minor in German language, during 12 years with the objective of meeting someone.
I also tried online dating and dating agencies with no result.
I worked a lot on myself.
I spent at least $20,000 in therapy over the years.
I worked out to be less skinny, cut my hair.
I'm now 180 pounds per 6 foot, and you see a picture of me with this email.
I was a Marxist when I first met you in person in 2009.
Since then, I'm a libertarian anarchist, without being fanatic and dogmatic.
I speak three languages, I have good hygiene.
I recently bought a beautiful small farm 50 kilometers from Montreal.
I have savings. I have a YouTube channel with videos against wars, especially on World War II and Churchill.
I'm very proud.
I like the person I am, but I hate and despair for my situation of loneliness, no companionship, no love, and no sex.
I stay alive by many coping mechanisms like video games, readings, podcasts, material comforts, and my finches.
I do take SSRIs since 2015 with different dosages, and it seems the higher the dosage was, the better was the dating experience.
I assume I'm picky.
I find most women unattractive.
Being a libertarian and into philosophy doesn't make things easy.
I live in the province of Quebec with the biggest welfare state and the highest income taxes in North America.
I paid over half a million dollars in taxes since I work for almost no services consumed.
I have found one great woman through this show, but she lives in another province, is not healthy, and is afraid that one of us leaves their life to join the other.
We are still in contact.
Knowing her made it even more difficult to settle for less.
Thank you. Well, good morning and welcome.
Thank you for joining the show.
Thank you for joining the conversation.
What else would you like to add to your letter?
From the beginning, hi and thank you very much.
From the beginning, like now, no, I don't have anything to add.
All right. Well, let's start with this.
Tell me a little bit about the circumstances of your parents' divorce.
I mean, obviously, you were four, so you probably don't remember too much of it directly, but what have you learned?
Oh, I do remember.
Oh, good. Okay. Well, let's go first.
Eyewitness, then. What happened with your parents in their marriage?
Okay. I know my parents married.
My mother was quite a beautiful woman, and she married very young because...
Her parents put pressure on her to get married because they didn't want to...
I think it was expensive to pay for a large family, though there were only six, but still.
I know they had a good choice for my father.
So my father was a violent man.
He was yelling a lot, so...
I'll be blunt.
The reason she divorced is that she told me that one day she went out for a party for her job.
When she came back, my father was angry at her, but apparently he had beaten me.
I was like 3 or 4 and I had a lot of bruises on me.
She went to see the doctor and he said, hey, you have to divorce from that man.
I can remember that they were yelling at each other.
I remember that. So, is your mother this passive as a whole?
Can you repeat that?
Is your mother this passive as a whole?
In other words, does she have to wait for a doctor to say to her, oh, you need to divorce this violent man because he's beating the hell out of your four-year-old son?
I don't know.
I wouldn't say that.
I think she was already in the process of wanting to, but I think it influenced her for that, I guess.
And then what happened over the process of the divorce?
Okay, but they separated in 1979.
Then I lived with my mother until I was 10.
I remember that the first year of the divorce, I was still looking for my father because suddenly, I think for a year or two, he kind of disappeared.
And at a point, I was still looking for him, even though I was totally afraid of him.
A part of me was afraid of him, but a part of me wanted to have some parents.
But when I was 10 years old, my mother, she had a boyfriend, and the relationship with my mother and her boyfriend was not that good, so she sent me living back with my father.
What was bad about your mom's relationship with her boyfriend?
Well, she...
My mother never had any difficulty to get a boyfriend.
I can just say that recently.
My mother is 68.
She recently broke with her boyfriend with whom she was for 21 years.
And it's her who broke her.
And her boyfriend is 11 younger than her.
And she already got proposition from men that she meet up on the street.
So she... Yeah, I get it.
She's very pretty. No, I understand.
She's very pretty. Okay, so that having been established...
So, a woman who is very pretty, who's not also very wise or very well raised, is usually both a victim and a victimizer because she milks men's lust for resources, but she has to kind of sell her soul for that because...
A woman who's very beautiful often makes men nervous.
And so who is it who gets to break through that nervousness and actually pursue the attractive women?
Because most men are afraid of rejection, right?
And that's actually a good thing.
It's a very good and healthy thing that we're afraid of rejection.
And those of us who don't feel fear, in other words, people who tend to have significant personality disorders, in my opinion, They don't feel fear.
And so they can coast up to a beautiful woman and they can push hard for her to go out with them without the heart-hammering fear of rejection that you or I might face.
And so beautiful women tend to attract...
Men who don't have the capacity to feel fear but then also don't have the capacity to bond, don't have the capacity to love, don't have the capacity to experience all the other emotions that make a human being something kind of different from a very advanced ape.
Although that's actually unfair to apes because apes can bond and protect their young as well.
So they are a victim insofar as their beauty creates this ring of fire around them that only those fireproof to emotions can get through.
But they also victimize, because they then will have children with men who are very aggressive, who don't feel fear, who don't have the capacity to bond or love, or have the tender, sensitive emotions that morality would dictate, or it's really required by morality.
So yeah, I get it.
She's a very attractive woman, and she tends to attract jerks, which is sadly kind of inevitable.
Well, I would say that her last boyfriend was a correct man.
I was an adult, but he was not a jerk, her last boyfriend.
The one she was with for 21 years?
Yeah. Okay, well, let me ask you this.
What work did your mother do on herself?
After she exposed her child to the violence of your father, what work did she do to improve herself, to learn better about herself?
What work has she done to apologize to you?
What work has she done to help you with your isolation that has been going on decade after decade as a good mother should?
What responsibility has she taken for her role in producing a child who can't find a relationship?
So if he is a proper man, then she must have become a proper woman.
In which case, why the hell are you calling me?
When I said that her last boyfriend was correct, I meant he was not like my father.
He was not violent.
It was another degree of relationship.
She didn't have children with that guy.
A few times I saw him in person, he was always polite and kind with me, but we were both adults.
Okay, so to answer your question...
Hang on, hang on. No, no, listen.
And the reason I'm annoyed is because you've been listening to the show for a long time.
And this doesn't mean that you're doing anything annoying at all.
It doesn't mean that at all.
It doesn't mean... I mean, I'm just saying I'm annoyed.
Because you've listened to this show for, you know, 2009.
I mean, we could say 12 years, right?
Give or take. Or you've been involved in this conversation.
You have a mother who married a violent man who has produced...
A view of womanhood that has to some degree kept you without a relationship for decades.
And the first thing you kind of do is defend her.
Oh, I was going to criticize her a lot.
Okay. We'll get to that.
But let's rewind a little bit so I can tell you sort of where I'm coming from because if I don't find a way to deal with the irritation, which again may have nothing to do with you whatsoever, if I don't find a way to deal with it, then I'm not going to be very productive in the conversation.
So bear with me. It could be entirely my issue.
So hopefully you'll be patient.
Sure, sure. What has your mother done to help you with this isolation that has been grinding your soul down for, okay, how long?
20 years? 25 years?
27 years.
27, okay. Let's just say three decades to round it up, right?
So, for 30 years, you've been kind of stewing in a slow hell of isolation.
And what has your mother done about it?
And also this man who is her boyfriend has known you for 21 years.
Wouldn't he have noticed that something is amiss?
Wouldn't he have said, huh, your son doesn't seem to be very happy.
He seems to be very isolated.
Let's all sit down and try and figure that out because I'm a decent human being.
I'm a correct man. I'm a better man than your father, your biological father.
So let's sort this out because there's someone in my life, right?
He's with your mother for 21 years.
And you've been alone for the entirety of the time that he was with your mother.
So if he cares about human beings, wouldn't he care about the son of the woman he claimed to love for more than two decades and sit down and try and sort things out or say, you guys need to sit down, I'll facilitate or, you know, we got to deal with this as somebody who's very, very alone and we got to deal with that.
Look, I fully agree with what you just said.
The fact is that I don't feel love for my mother or most of the people in my family and my so-called friend because exactly as you just said, almost nobody never helped me about that.
I have a friend that I remember that one time he told me because he just split with his girlfriend and was sad and he came living with me for a few months because he couldn't need a place to stay and he told me I've been single for six months and I find that sad and I really feel that it must be really painful for you and just that A few words of empathy that I received from that friend,
I think it was in 2011, made that, even if I don't, because that friend is very, very, is kind of not fully hostile, but he's kind of hostile to my libertarian principle, but I still consider him as a friend because in my brain, the moment he showed me empathy for that, It was very...
I felt it.
So, yes, I have always had some resentment against my mother, and I told her a few times, and she said, what can I do for you?
I can't do anything, and you should think...
She even told me once that I should focus on something else.
I found very sad to hear from her.
So no, I see my mother maybe once, twice a year because I'm so alone that I will take even relationships that are not fully great as I would twice a year because I'm so alone that I will take even relationships that are not fully great as I would wish because if you spend most of your weekend and My mother apologized.
I know many times that she regretted to send me back living with my father, who was yelling at me.
Though, after 10 years old, he never was physically violent with me, but psychologically, he was terribly violent.
Well, and that's worse, right?
Hang on. I'm sure you understand, but just for those of you who don't, if he stopped hitting you when you were 10, that's much worse.
Because it means that he could have stopped any time.
He just happened to stop right before you hit puberty and became big enough to potentially challenge him back.
It means that he could have stopped any time he wanted.
He just didn't have any incentive to.
But the moment you got bigger and stronger, he stopped.
The same thing happened with my mother, right?
She would beat me up when I was a child.
And then when I got bigger and started fighting back, she's like, whoa, whoa.
We don't want any of this violence in the family now, do we?
It's like, oh my God, how vile.
How utterly cowardly and vile.
So yeah, the fact that he stopped hitting you in my book is even worse.
I mean, obviously, I'm glad he stopped hitting you.
But it means that he could have stopped any time.
Any time. Yes.
So yes, my mother, when she sent me back living with my father, she regretted it.
She even tried to get me back with her.
And personally, I wanted to get back with her.
But my father and his family were kind of, I would say, they were making pressure on me, not even, I would say, manipulated me to feel guilty of leaving my father alone.
So I was kind of afraid to leave.
But yes, my mother apologized.
She even came once, twice with me, she came to a therapy session.
So I will admit that she made some effort.
But for my sadness of being alone, she almost never showed any empathy.
And I resent her, I resent that toward her.
And yes, as I say, most of my so-called friends, almost nobody never Try to help me in that way, saying, oh, but one day you will meet someone.
And I used to believe for a long time that, oh, I just have to wait because it's something that is due to me until I started to think rationally.
So I fully get and agree with what you said.
No, good things come to those who wait.
That's for women. No, men, we've got to go out and carve out things.
You know, like a woman can...
A woman can clear an acre of farmland from woods to plantable simply by putting on some makeup because men will go and do things in order to win her.
So she can just wait and be pretty historically.
Maybe it's not quite as much the case anymore, but yeah, a woman can clear farmland with lipstick.
Men put on lipstick, nothing happens.
As you say, you've worked out to become less skinny.
You cut your hair. You're a tall, trim guy and nothing's coming.
We can't just sit around and wait for good things to happen because we're not women.
Men, we've got to go out and do things.
I've had a lot of wisdom in my head over the years.
Nobody was going to come knocking on my door.
I had to go make a podcast. I had to go and Push it out and make people aware of it and do all the marketing and post on various forums that I was doing this and get people involved and engaged in interviews.
I couldn't just wait for the world to beat a path to my door.
And that's the male-female thing, right?
It's why women tend to be more egalitarian because they don't know that many unusual women, whereas men tend to accept the bell curve in various abilities because we know men who are just fantastically great at stuff, which we're not.
There's no comparison. So we accept difference and that the difference is going to play out.
Women tend to be clustered around the center and so they generally don't know too many unusual Women, and therefore they can't quite understand why the world has such wildly different outcomes.
It's kind of funny. Or if they do know different women, the differences tend to be around looks, and that's vaguely unfair, which it is.
I get that, but unfair is only if there's a fair standard to measure from, which there isn't in this case.
It's just things are as they are.
And it's sad to me, like you've had friends for decades, And, you know, I don't know.
It's a strange thing around friendship.
Like, what are people talking about?
You hang out with friends. What do you do?
You know, you've got a big giant misery in your life, which is your isolation.
And why aren't friends saying, you know what?
I've got nothing to do today.
Let's just sit around and chat about what's going on in your life for eight hours.
Like, why not? Is everyone so busy?
Is there a new update to doom eternal that people just can't have year after year, decade after decade, just can't have a sensible conversation about what's actually going on in someone's life?
It's impossible.
What the hell is everyone talking about?
What are you doing spending your life between crib and crypt?
What did God give you language skills for?
What do you have a voice for if not to speak about things that matter?
What is the point of getting up unless you're going to talk about something that matters?
I mean, you've had friends for decades.
They've seen you stew in this misery.
And I had a friend for many years.
Also, very isolated.
And I would spend a lot of time talking with him about it.
Now, unfortunately, it didn't end up doing a whole lot of good, which is a shame, because some people, you know, you can lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink, you can lead a man to reason, but you can't make him think.
And I, you know, don't have that friend in my life anymore, because...
The slow spiraling repetition of complaints followed by input, followed by not listening, followed by complaints, followed by input, followed by not listening, just got tiresome.
This is a guy.
We grew up near each other.
Even when I had a baby, because he didn't have a car, he could have afforded a car, but he didn't have a car.
I would have to, you know, bundle up the baby and we lived fairly far apart and I'd have to drive like an hour or an hour and a half to go and see him and we'd see him and we'd drive an hour, hour and a half to get back and, you know, with a baby.
That's really an uncertain journey, right?
And he, of course, wouldn't.
Come to visit. Or if he did come to visit, I'd have to go and pick him up from the furthest place that public transit could easily get him to.
And again, that was sort of a – just every time we wanted to get together, it was an hour or two at least of driving or three.
Anyway, so eventually he got a free car.
It doesn't really matter how.
He got a free car. And I was like, oh, great.
Now he can get his license finally.
He's in his 40s. He can get his license.
And I won't have to do all the driving to go visit, right?
And didn't get his license.
Car just sat in the garage gathering dust.
Never said, hey man, like for years you've been driving to come see me.
Maybe I can take that burden, especially because you got a baby.
Nope. So, but I have no regrets because I poured everything into trying to help.
And as you know, I'm pretty good.
At helping people with abstract issues like this.
Yes. Your friend, just like one comment?
Over decades, it's like, dude, I'm not saying this to get mad at your friend.
I'm just, as a whole, can we not talk about important things?
I know. That's why I feel that I don't have any real connection with a lot of people because I guess that...
And I've already told my mother, if I had a son and he was in my situation, I would try to help him.
And she said, but I don't...
I'm sorry. I don't know any women.
I don't know what to say.
And last time I saw her for the New Year's Day, when she told me about that she had already been approached by a great man that she found attractive, that was fully interested in her, I said, I told her, do you realize you've been in a relationship since she won years?
And as soon as you Become single back.
You got great opportunity.
And me, I have been single for decades and it almost never happened.
And she said, I don't know what to tell you.
And that's when I realized that the value of most of my relationships are not that good.
And I'm at the point that I can see what something that will happen in the future, especially with the economy.
And I'm pretty sure at one point some of my family of origin will come asking me for help with what is coming in the next years.
And I know what I will tell.
Why should I care about you?
You never cared about me.
I have been... I have been a very poor person for love and relationship, but nobody ever cared about me, so why would I care about you if you didn't save money or didn't even took my advice about Because, as you maybe understand, I'm very good at everything that is intellectual and rational.
I probably compensate a lot, so I like to talk about the libertarian principle, debunking wars...
No, no. Okay, hang on. Dude, you remember I said at the beginning of the show that humility can be very helpful, being humbled?
Okay, you're not good at rationality because...
You have a problem called solitude that you've been unable to solve.
Now, you may be able to dance Like Michael Flatley on cocaine among the abstractions that don't particularly affect your daily life, like libertarianism, and you could probably give me a good hour on the wage gap and minimum wage and how bad the delusions are that people have about these things.
That's what I meant. That's what I meant, yes.
Yeah, okay, but I just, because you say, like, I'm really good at rationality, and you have, I mean, the most important problem is solitude, and you've spent 30 years not solving it, right?
So again, I'm not saying you're bad at rationality, But I think what you mean to say is you much prefer dealing with abstractions that aren't emotionally challenging.
Yes, you're right. I agree.
Okay. And this is the thing too.
This is not particularly directed at you, but I'm talking to you and the world for all time.
For how many years in my show have been telling people, stop sleeping around, stop dating uselessly, stop being alone, find someone, settle down, get married, have kids.
That's the path to happiness, if you can achieve that, right?
I've been saying this for a long time, arguing against promiscuity, arguing against solitude, isolation.
And, you know, I've said, how many times have I said, we're dogs, not cats.
We're social animals.
We're not solitary beings.
We need each other. And, you know, for those of you who are out there, and I've got some emails about this, like, I should have listened to you.
I'm kicking myself because I didn't settle down, and then COVID hit, and no one's dating.
You can't get a new relationship going.
Everyone's paranoid. Everyone's jumpy.
And, yeah, I mean, you never know what's going to happen in life.
You never know what's going to happen in life wherein your sexual market value, your dating market value is going to plummet.
Like, you want to be pair-bonded and you want to be married.
You want to be committed. You want to have that monogamy going before, I don't know, you get cancer.
Because, you know, you get cancer, nobody's going to want to date you.
Right? Because they'll be like, I wish you well, but we don't have that kind of bond.
So you want to get bonded, especially when you're young and more healthy and all of that.
You just don't. You don't want to start dating when you get older.
Now, here you can, right?
You're a young, healthy guy and all of that, at least relative to me.
Certainly younger. But yeah, just don't keep waiting.
Don't keep thinking something better is coming down the pipe.
Now, this is particularly true for the women who listen to this because you can always go and get that little bitty bink of dopamine hit from a man who's interested in you and you can wait until...
Jamie Dornan comes along and does sit-ups in your presence and showers money on you in the bathtub.
That ain't going to happen. That ain't going to happen.
It's like in the movie The Fisher King.
There was this achingly beautiful blonde woman reading Nietzsche.
And I remember watching that movie.
It's a pretty bad movie, even if you do want to see Robin Williams' penis.
But I remember, oh man, achingly beautiful woman reading Nietzsche.
What more could you ask for? Yeah.
But that's mostly a fantasy, right?
The idea that these two things would be co-joined is very rare, and if they are co-joined, usually one happens at the expense of the other.
All right. So I just wanted to sort of mention that just as everyone out there, you know, cautionary tale, right?
I mean, when things begin to lift up, if, God, it feels like if they ever will, then get out there, get yourself settled down, and get yourself a stable household going, man.
It's... Because the people who didn't do that, and I'm not putting you in this category because your issues go way back before COVID or anything like that, but just for those of you out there, if you did listen to me and you did settle down and you have companionship in these Largely lockdowned times.
I mean, because the government wouldn't close the borders because it was racist, right?
Because the governments wouldn't close the borders in Canada, you've got 15 million people in Ontario under house arrest because the government wouldn't do the right thing, wouldn't solve the problem.
And apparently it was racist to So tell me about the relationship you had 27 years ago and what happened with it.
Oh, I was a teenager and one of my friend's girlfriends, she knew another girl who was single and she just introduced me and we went into a relationship for almost a year.
But at that time, I was young, I was...
Very irrational.
I went into the military at part time when I was 17 years old.
She really hated that.
Sometimes I was saying stupid things to her that, of course, today I regret.
What did you say to her that you regret?
I was just provoking her, teasing her just to get attention and she found that annoying.
And at a point, she just broke.
And I remember when she broke, I didn't get really sad at the time as if I was happy.
You mean, sorry, you mean when she broke up with you?
Yeah. That was it.
I consider it was a nice experience because she was attractive and it was fun to have a girlfriend like everybody else.
I agree with your definition of love.
Sorry, you know that English is not my first language.
Don't sweat it.
I was actually admiring your English earlier.
You know, I speak only one language, and I was admiring your English earlier, so take that as a compliment because, Lord, if we had to do it in any other language, it wouldn't be happening, so I appreciate your language skills, and it's totally fine.
Don't worry about it. If I ask for the occasional clarification, that's not a criticism in any way, shape, or form.
I admire anyone who can learn a foreign language, and so good for you.
Well done. Love is our involuntary response to virtue.
Involuntary. I was looking for that word.
So I agree with that and now I know that every time in my life that I thought that I was in love with a woman, that was not love.
That was mostly neediness and lust and the sadness of having been alone.
So I could not love her.
The girl when you were 17 was...
Was pretty, right? You said she was attractive?
Yeah, kind of.
And so when you say that you find women unattractive in general, what do you mean?
I find them unattractive.
A lot of women are overweight now.
I find many women unattractive.
I don't like their face.
When I look at their face, I wouldn't like to kiss them.
That doesn't mean that they are a bad person.
I understand the difference between attraction and love.
You can be a very virtuous and loving person and be ugly.
But that's the reaction I have with the A lot of women that I see or met, I just don't find them attractive.
And by getting older, it doesn't get better.
So that's it.
When you talk about the women being overweight, do you mean like obese or do you just mean 20 pounds or what are you talking about?
Well, I mean, quite overweight, yes.
I find that a lot of women are overweight, yes.
Okay, so we're talking like so overweight that you couldn't, whether you call it the basketball test or the running test, like they couldn't play basketball, they couldn't run, that kind of thing?
No, maybe not at that point, but...
I don't find attractive a woman.
I prefer a woman that is maybe not skinny, but proportional or slim.
Yes, and it is a rough IQ test proxy, right?
Because being overweight and being less intelligent, it's not obviously a perfect correlation, but they do tend to go roughly, step by step, so to speak.
Now, what about women who are of a reasonable weight?
And that doesn't mean, you know, swimsuit model or anything like that because, you know, I was reading this thing the other day about athletes and how, you know, athletes, they look so fit, they look so healthy.
There was a tennis pro who basically said, out of the entire year, I maybe spent four weeks feeling good.
Because I'm always nursing some injury, some stretch, some problem, some knee thing, because they push their body so hard that they're right at the edge of what the human body can actually do.
And so the people who look super fit are often not feeling good in their own bodies.
They're not I mean, you want something in the middle of the bell curve, not sloth, but the hyper-exercise will often bring...
I mean, just look at Arnold Schwarzenegger's heart issues and things like that, and his knee issues.
He's wrecked his knees from all his squats, and I think he's had now two open-heart surgeries or something like that.
I mean, it's pretty rough.
Okay, so you want somebody who's of reasonable weight, which means that they can...
The weight doesn't interfere with regular day-to-day activities, and...
But you said that the face is an issue, and what's that?
I mean, I find that a lot of women are unattractive for the face.
I mean, I look at them and I just feel immediately no desire to eventually kiss or kiss.
And there are women that I have met, that I have known that I found them attractive and the desire was there.
Okay, so what percentage of women, and just to be perfectly frank here, obviously, you know, I mean, if you can't be frank, then I'm not saying you won't be, but if you can't be frank, we can't solve any problems.
What percentage of women would you say you find very attractive?
I would say maybe 20% of women, I find them attractive enough.
I don't believe that number.
I honestly don't. I don't believe that number.
You could be completely right.
But you talk about being fussy and lots of women are overweight and you don't like the way the face goes and this, that and the other, right?
So are you saying that one in five women...
Right? It's a bit of a trick question, right?
No, it's a bit of a trick question because I didn't specify an age range, right?
I mean, we're talking about adults, of course, right?
I didn't specify an age range.
So what percentage of women that you meet do you want to ask out?
Oh my God, that would be less than that because some women...
Of course, yeah, because somebody can be, you know, reasonably good looking but 17, right?
Yeah, I wouldn't...
Look, I'm 45.
I would want to have a child, so I'm trying not to date women that are older than me, ideally below 40.
And I wouldn't want to be with a woman that I can be her, you know, that I can be her father.
So I would prefer a woman that is at least 30 years old.
Okay, so we've got 30 to 40, so you've got 10 years.
And of the women that you meet...
What percentage would you ask it or would you like to ask it?
Right now, I don't meet a lot of women, especially with the COVID thing.
Most women I have met in my life, I met them through online dating or even some dating agency that I paid for that.
In my day-to-day life, As I said, I went to university.
Yeah, almost zero. I think we can get to… Yeah, it's almost zero, right?
Okay, so what happened with the dating agencies or the online dating?
We want to be fully honest here and that's what I think I do.
I have accepted to date women that I find less attractive in case maybe something could develop.
Also because at a point I had nothing else to do that at least it would be an experience.
It's in practice, right?
Yes. For a time in my life I had some casual sex.
And I fully agree with you that it's not a good thing.
At a point, I think that the lust for sex was probably greater than my wisdom.
But since I got 40, I probably had less Libido, less sex drive that I'm no longer able to have casual sex, which I'm grateful for that.
And maybe the medication I took for anxiety is also hard on libido.
So at least I'm not into that anymore.
Do you want me to ask the question again?
Because I think you got lost in your answer.
What happened with the dating agency?
So the dating agency is, just for those of you who don't know, the dating agency, they give you like a test.
whether it's like a personality test or an interest test, and then they will try to match you up with other people.
There's a barrier to entry because some of these things can be quite expensive, a thousand dollars or $2,000 or more.
And they will try to match you up with someone who fits a particular profile.
And it's not as random as the, uh, the swipe or the stab at, at some self description.
And, uh, yeah.
So what happened with the women that you met through those situations?
I have tried a few different kinds of agencies through the years.
I remember when I started, when I was 30 years old, trying such things.
The first kind of agency that I tried, it was not an agency that was matching you up.
They were only doing activities for single people.
So I went there. But I was 30 years old and most of the women that were there were really older than me.
And most women I saw there were really unattractive.
The second kind of agency that I tried was the one you just explained that was matching people.
The match I got, the women were...
I could not complain that they were not attractive.
They were attractive enough, so I could not complain about that.
In every case, I was interested to see the women a second time, but every time the women were not.
After my contract expired, the matchmaker explained to me that every woman said that I was cute and I was a very kind person.
She even said the word...
I remember she said it in English, you have a good soul.
That's what women apparently said about me.
They didn't like...
I try not to talk too much about politics, but it's hard for me because that's what interests me.
Philosophy, politics, I have an interest in that.
And I understand that probably it's a coping mechanism because when I debate, when I talk about that, it's kind of if I forget my pain of loneliness.
So I'm totally conscious of that.
But yeah, the problem is here in Quebec, meeting a woman...
Wait, hang on, hang on. So, sorry, the feedback you got from the dating agency was the women said you were kind, had a good soul, but what, you were too intense about politics?
You talked about politics too much?
Yes. And I swear that I made an effort not to talk about it, but apparently there were other small details like when we went for a date, apparently I hesitated to To go to a place because I live in the suburb.
Those women were living in the city.
So I didn't know.
Apparently, I hesitated to be affirmative enough to say, hey, let's go there.
Let's meet there. Apparently, women didn't like that.
Oh, that you weren't sort of, in a sense, bossy or like, let's do this?
Yes, yes, yes.
Well, Quebec women do seem to like a fairly assertive dude.
I lived in Quebec for four years and they like a firm hand, so to speak.
Are you aware that in Canada, Quebec has the highest rate of divorce, the highest rate of suicide amongst men, one of the highest rates of single mothers and also the biggest welfare state?
Oh, yeah. No, listen, I mean, because...
I mean, this goes back to the silent revolution in the 60s, but because...
Quebec was so staunchly Catholic and so staunchly Christian, it was targeted by the cultural destroyers with great power, great concentration, and sadly great effect.
So yeah, no, the Christ got cut out of the heart of the province and it's been a bit of a human wreckage scene ever since.
I mean, because I openly criticize feminism, I'm seen as an evil sexist man by a lot of people that used to be my friend and even in my own family for that.
Of course, if I go on a date, I don't start talking about that.
But when I went at that dating agency, I said to the matchmaker that I'm not a fan of feminism.
I'm not. I believe women have the basic right that every libertarian agrees on.
I mean, women should be free to do whatever they want with their life.
I agree with abortion, birth control, signing contract, and everything like that.
I reject the feminist ideology associated with the welfare state and the so-called wage gap.
Okay, dude, dude, what are you doing?
No, what are you doing?
You've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me.
Okay, look. Were these dating agencies run by women?
Yes, they were. Okay, okay.
So you're going to a career woman, right?
Who's an entrepreneur, started her own business, right?
Is she likely to be a feminist?
I didn't thought about that.
Well, I'm telling you now, right?
You've got to think about who's on the other side of the desk, right?
Because you get lost in your own abstractions and you think that the truth will win you through no matter what the cost.
Well, it won't. You've got to know who's on the other side of the desk, right?
So you go to a feminist who's responsible for your dating life and you say, I'm anti-feminist.
And then you're like, well, it didn't really work out with the women that were...
When I told the feminist that I was anti-feminist, it turns out that the women that the feminist chose for the anti-feminist didn't really work out.
And that's what I mean. Like, yeah, you've got to be sensitive to your ideas.
You've got to act with integrity.
But if you're going to go to a career woman saying I'm anti-feminist and then put that career woman in charge of your dating life, it's not going to work out.
Now, she'll take your money.
Of course. But she's not going to sit there and say, huh, how can I make sure that the anti-feminist has a family and children?
I never thought about that.
I thought that...
But that's what I mean about the ideas are more real to you in a way than the people, right?
In other words, you say, well, I'm anti-feminist.
I'm being honest. And it's like, yeah, you are.
You are. You are, but it hadn't occurred to you that the ambitious woman who started this business and has sacrificed a huge amount, she doesn't spend much time with her kids.
She may not have even got married herself or if she did, she may not have even had kids because she's so wedded to being an empowered entrepreneurial feminist woman and then you come in and say, help me make babies.
I hate your ideology and everything about your life is a lie.
I never thought about that.
I know that if I meet a woman, I cannot say that up front, unless it's a woman I would meet through your show.
Well, and listen, here's the thing.
Honesty is really, really important, obviously, and you think that you're being honest, but let me make a case that You're not, right?
Let's say that you're not being honest.
So let's say you live in a neighborhood where there are people who speak a different language where North means South and South means North.
And someone comes up to you and they're wounded and they obviously need a hospital.
And they say hospital and you say north, but because they speak this other language where north means south, they end up going in the opposite direction from the hospital.
Okay, so have you told them the truth about where the hospital is?
Well, sure, you said the word north, but in their language it means south, so they go the opposite direction.
So have you been honest?
Because the first thing you need to do is figure out what the word means to the other person.
Do they speak English where north means north, or do they speak opposite tongue where north means south?
So when you start saying to women, I'm anti-feminist, you have a definition of feminism that they don't have.
The same way you have a definition of north that means south to the other person.
So my question is, and it's a very interesting question, I think, are you being honest if you use words that the other person thinks means the opposite?
So for instance, a lot of people Think that, like there's a whole anti-rationality movement, right?
That's been going on in the West since Khan to 18th century, blah, blah, blah, right?
So when you tell people to be rational, let's take a cliched example.
You say to a woman, I need you to be rational.
Then what the woman will often experience that word to mean, the meaning for the woman of rational is be without emotion.
Now, since a lot of women and some men, of course, identify their personalities with emotions, and rightly so.
I mean, emotions are very, very important.
When they hear you must be rational, what they hear is you have to not be yourself and you have to be a robot with no human feeling.
You have to not have an identity.
You have to give up all your lusts, your passions, your joys, your orgasms, your pleasures, your whatever, right?
You have to be rational, which means be a robot like Spock in Star Trek, right?
So when you say to people, you must be X or I don't like Y or I believe in Z, if you don't know what the word means to the other person, you're not being honest.
You're not being honest.
You say, you have a particular definition of feminism, which is to do with coercive and unjust female privilege in a statist society, right?
I mean, that's what feminism generally means to libertarians, to people who've studied this in fairly great depth.
Feminism means unjust, coercive female privilege in a statist society.
And... That's not what the word feminism means.
Of course, they don't promote the word feminism to mean that.
They promote the word feminism to mean what?
Female empowerment and female equality.
That's what the word is sold as, obviously.
It's not sold as violent, unjust female privilege in a state of society.
That's not how the word is sold. Sorry, Steph.
When I went to the dating agency, I tried to explain that I was against radical feminism, that I had nothing against women who work, who want to do whatever they want with their life, but that I prefer a woman that is not a radical feminist, that is open to have a family, things like that.
I try to explain it.
No, but hang on.
You're saying to a woman who probably has forgone having a family to start a business that that's bad.
Because she runs the dating agency, right?
I don't know what to tell you about that.
You must know, hang on, and you cannot, in the course of a single conversation, prize someone free of 30 years of indoctrination.
I mean, if you run marathons, you don't go to someone who spent 20 years sitting on the couch And say, join me on the marathon.
You understand? That's not being sensitive to the reality of the other person.
The reality of the other person is she believes, probably, right?
If she's a feminist, she believes.
And listen, I've interacted with so many of these people on social media over the years.
I think I can speak with some authority.
Doesn't mean I'm right. I'm just saying I've had some experience.
That if you talk about the happiness of women who have children, what the feminists say is, oh, you just want to turn women into brood mares, into birthing cows.
So they genuinely view the joy of having children and raising children As being a form of reproductive livestock.
Now, of course, that tells you everything you need to know about their mothers and so on, but they genuinely believe that.
Now, not only have they genuinely...
It's one thing to genuinely believe something of the abstract.
It's quite another thing to have made major life choices based upon those beliefs.
Major life choices based upon those beliefs.
So, a lot of these feminists...
And I have sympathy.
I really have sympathy.
I have sympathy. A lot of these feminists, they have natural human, I don't say female, but human yearnings for pair bonding and raising children and all of that, right?
And they've been told That they should sleep around, which has destroyed their capacity to pair bond.
They've told that drinking is empowerment, that being a woo-party girl is empowerment.
They've been told that they'll be safe in any circumstances no matter what because Wonder Woman and Female Power and Girl Power and Tank Girl and Hayley Quinn and All the fantasies about how powerful women are in conflict situations when of course all you have to look is at the mass institutional rape of little British girls to see that women did not band together as superhero vigilante squads to deal with this issue.
They complained that they called the cops and the men who did band together and try and deal with this issue got arrested.
But I don't remember any female gangs getting together to deal with this issue so they've been told that you'll be safe no matter what because you're protected by a magic spell called empowerment and feminism and they put themselves in terribly dangerous situations and sometimes very bad things happen to them which then they get to say oh you see that's the patriarchy it's like nope that's what happens when the patriarchy doesn't function in instructing women about the dangers Of being a female.
Just as, like, if you had a social structure that told men that, you know, you should just have free speech no matter what.
You should be able to go into any environment, say whatever you want, and there'd be no consequences.
Then men would go out and say highly provocative things in highly dangerous environments and would get beaten up.
All men know that you have to be careful in certain situations.
We all know this because we're raised that way and we understand this and we get this from the playground, right?
Where if you say something really harsh to some other boy, that other boy might push you.
There might be a fight, right?
And so you've got to be judicious.
You've got to pick your words and you've got to recognize that there are violent people in the world and you've got to be kind of careful.
A friend of mine when I was in junior high school said something offensive to a very big Lebanese boy in our school and hey, guess what?
There was a fight. There was a fight.
And there was a fight after school and all the kids knew about it and it was going to be a particular location and everybody went and it was pretty bad.
So, we know that there's risks and there's dangers about that, so sometimes we hold our tongues, of course, because we're not idiots and we know that there's bad things out there.
But if we were raised to just, oh, you can say whatever you want and you'll be protected by this magic shield called masculinity and no matter what you say, nothing bad will ever happen, well, all that would happen is we'd be putting ourselves in danger, right?
I think Lauren Southern was talking about this not too long ago that one of the reasons she dislikes feminism is it tries to teach women that there aren't any dangers in the world.
And she was contacted by a woman.
A bunch of women went to Pakistan.
Some of them ended up getting raped.
And you think of Lara Logan.
She was covering the Arab Spring and she got separated from her film crew.
And it was unbelievably brutal what happened to her, and she's had to have multiple surgeries to attempt to reconstruct the damage.
It's a bad world out there, but, you know, it's not what we explain, right?
It's, you know, men are all Russell Crowe in Unhinged, right?
It's a pretty terrible movie, by the way.
So, when you go and you say feminism, you might say, well, no, but I explained what my position was.
But you don't understand, or at least maybe you do, maybe you don't, but you don't understand necessarily that she's already been inoculated against what you say.
Because anti-feminism means anti-woman.
It means that women are barefoot, uneducated, in the kitchen, never allowed to pick up a book like some weird fantasy from a Margaret Atwood book.
And that you're going to be, you just want to use women as broodmares and to make you a sandwich, and they're never allowed to raise their voice, they're never allowed to think for themselves, they're never allowed to have an opinion.
That's what it means. That's what the world means.
North means south. Right?
Being anti-injustice means being anti-equality.
So that's what the word means.
Now you sit there and you, across from this table from this woman, and you say, oh, but, you know, I'm I'm anti-feminist, but, you know, I think it's fine if women have equality.
Now, you can sit there and say, well, I've explained it, but she's already been inoculated against that explanation because she's already been told by feminists that, oh, when a guy says he's just against extreme feminism, what he means is this, right?
So she's already got an answer as to what you mean.
You say, well, I'm explaining myself, right?
Honesty requires that you understand the meaning of your words To other people.
Right? So when I wrote my books on anarchy, practical, everyday anarchy, practical anarchy, oh, those many years ago, when I wrote those books, first thing I did was say, it's pretty tough to reclaim the word anarchy because it's come to mean violence, lawlessness, destruction. I had to address what the word means to people first.
Right? When I write, when I, look, what are the odds that some guy...
Like an ex-software entrepreneur with a history degree, solves the problem of secular morality, something that's baffled philosophers for thousands of years.
The odds are extremely tiny.
So first thing I did was I didn't say in the book, I've solved the problem in universally preferable behavior.
First thing I did was I said, listen, the odds that I've done it are very low.
And you're absolutely completely and totally right to be skeptical that I've solved the problem of secular morality.
And went into great detail about why it was so unlikely and that I understood and accepted people's skepticism.
Now, I do this in my communications.
Now, I don't do this necessarily in my communications with people who, like yourself, you know, a longer-term thing.
But you want to be honest, and I appreciate that.
But honesty requires you know what your words mean to other people.
If reason means being a robot without emotion, telling people to be rational is telling them to not feel and not have any reason for living, to not be themselves, to not have pleasures, passions, because it's to not have happiness, to not have happiness because happiness is an emotion.
And if they believe that saying being rational means don't have emotions, then you're going to strip them of happiness and life is not going to be worth living.
So a lot of people, when they hear be rational, they hear just die.
Just die inside. Have no reason for anything.
Just be rational. Be like a robot.
Be like a computer. Have no feelings, no passions, right?
That's what they hear. Now, if you don't know that that's what they hear and you say, well, I'm encouraging them to be rational, it's like that's not what they hear.
And honesty requires, it demands that you know what your words mean to people.
Now, you know that the word feminism means female empowerment and female equality.
That's how it's sold. Now, it's not true.
That's not what it means. But that's how it's sold.
And once a woman has made major life choices, she had some great guy who wanted to date her and marry her, but she's like, no, I'm going to go find myself.
I'm going to go Start a business.
And listen, these women are competent and smart and look, maybe they don't want kids.
Maybe being an entrepreneur is the greatest thing that they could do and have more power to them.
Fantastic. I have no issues with that whatsoever.
But the likelihood is that they did have a great guy who wanted to marry them and they said, no, I'm not going to become your broodmare.
I'm going to go found a business.
And then they're getting older.
And they find that money doesn't buy you happiness, right?
And their sexual market value is beginning to decline, and they're in the business of getting other women paired off, but they can't pair off themselves.
And maybe, just maybe, they're selling a bit of a con, right?
Maybe they're saying, oh, give me a couple of thousand dollars, I'll find you a good date.
Maybe it's not really the case.
Maybe it's not such an honorable business at all.
Maybe it's a bit of a scam, right?
Yes. I don't know. But you have to know what the words mean.
And you can't just sit there and say, well, up is down, black is white, good is evil, and now you understand me.
It's very hard, especially after I met a woman that was From this show that I could talk fully in full honesty with her and that we all we kind of agreed with each other on almost everything and that she is not a feminist and she she agreed with my value after knowing such a woman that and who was also very attractive it's It's terribly difficult to try to find someone that I have to be careful as you just described.
Okay, and listen, I don't want to talk about this woman in any detail because she's not part of the conversation, but is there a reason outside of risk that you wouldn't just move to be with her and make you go with it?
I offered her many possibilities.
I offered that I could take months off my job to go live with her in Western Canada to see if...
Wait, like move in?
Yes. What are you talking about?
You'd go from being pen pals to moving in together?
No, we already met in person.
Okay. How many times?
Once. But we had some...
Oh, come on, dude. Don't snow me here.
Come on. You go move in with her?
What are you, crazy? You can't go move in with her?
No, no, no. What I said, no, no.
I mean, sorry.
What I said is that I could take some time off to go, let's say, you know, without abandoning my job, without abandoning my apartment, my house or anything.
I could go spend time with her like a few weeks, even a few months later.
I could take three months off my job without losing the job.
No, I get that.
But would you go and move in with her during those weeks or months?
I would go spend time with her to know each other and if after, let's say, a few months...
Okay, no, no, no. Hang on.
You're not answering my question. Would you go and live with her if you went to visit her for these weeks or months?
I guess so, yes.
Maybe... What do you mean you guess so?
Surely you've talked about it. Like, where would you live?
Where would you live? You'd live with her, right?
You'd move into her place for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, right?
Yes, or I could maybe rent a place, so I was hoping to...
Okay, so maybe you'd save a couple of thousand bucks if you moved in with her.
Listen, you can't just go from knowing someone remotely to just moving in with them.
I agree with that.
Not ten seconds ago you didn't.
We have talked for at least three years together with video conversation and all that.
No, and that's wonderful.
That's wonderful. But living together is for marriage.
Let me say it again.
Living together is for marriage.
Yes, I agree with that.
So you don't live together Before you get married.
But my goal was to find a way that we can know each other with the goal of getting married and living together.
But because of the distance, I tried to offer her many solutions that if she wanted to come Spend time here, I would compensate her.
We know if she stopped working, I would compensate her with money.
I tried to offer a solution, but she was afraid and I fully understand that.
What's she afraid of?
She is afraid that if after a while one of us abandon his life in his province, that if it doesn't work, all the trouble that it will do.
And I understand that.
She's very afraid of that.
Yeah, I don't...
I'm not saying I'm right. I don't really understand that risk analysis.
I don't understand that risk analysis at all.
So let's say you quit your job and you go rent a place near her or let's say you just take time off from your job, you go rent a place near her and you guys spend some time together and let's say it works out.
You like each other, you get along and then you get married, right?
Okay, that's good, right?
Then that's a good decision, right?
Because you don't need more money and you can always find another job.
What you need is someone to love, right?
Yes. Okay.
So let's say that you make these sacrifices and it doesn't work out.
Listen, the best chance you have of things working out are a reasonable level of attraction and shared values.
Rational values. Sensible values, right?
You have a reasonable level of attraction and you have shared values.
What the fuck else are you waiting for?
Like, no, seriously, what else?
Like, what other? Are you waiting for a sign?
Is there supposed to be some Joan of Arc sort that's supposed to lead you across Canada to her?
I mean, what else are you waiting for?
I tried to offer her as many solutions as I had been thinking of.
At a point, she just...
She felt pressure and she got mad at me, so I had to stop talking about it.
But yes, she was for me the best possible match I had met.
And she, at a point...
She told me the same thing, that I was kind of the man of her dream and that...
Okay, so instead of trying to...
Oh my God, I'm so sorry.
This again. I could be completely wrong.
I'll just tell you my approach, right?
So my approach would be I would take a hiatus from my job.
I would find a place to rent for a couple of weeks or a couple of months near her.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I would say, I'm coming.
I hope that you want to spend time with me.
Otherwise, I'll get to explore your fine city or your fine province or wherever, right?
But I'm not, you know, clearly the negotiation part is not working out.
It's no pressure for you.
I'm going to be in the vicinity.
I'm going to be nearby. I will ask you for dinner and I will have my own place.
And, you know, we'll see if we like each other.
Now, if it doesn't work out, no harm, no foul.
If it does work out, that's a wonderful thing for us both.
But... Just make the decision.
Go be near her.
And then there's no pressure.
Now, if it's like, well, I got to come move in with you, well, that's a whole bunch of pressure.
Of course, you'd be resisting it because she's a sensible woman.
Right? But this is what I mean by, like, just...
Like, be a leader.
Act with integrity to your own thoughts and feelings.
You want to be near her, so go move there for a couple of weeks or a couple of months.
And... Have something else to do, right?
Maybe there's other people you can meet up with, maybe from this community or wherever, right?
And have some other stuff to do.
Just be in the vicinity. But trying to negotiate about how it's all going to work, well, yeah, I mean, that's not...
But just be a leader.
Go be in the vicinity. I mean, this is something I've told the story years ago, and I'll keep it very brief, but there was a woman I was attracted to who was moving to Another city?
And a friend of mine said, well, I mean, gosh, if you end up going out with her and it's really working out and she moves to another city, that's it.
I said, no, it's not. He said, what do you mean?
I said, well, just move there. I mean, I'll find a way to make it work.
I'll just move there. It's no big deal.
What's more important than love?
What's more important than love?
Just, again, you know, I mean, I know it's tough to, people say, well, you know, if you're going out there with all this expectations, all this pressure, and it's like, yeah, that's hers to manage, right?
You don't have to manage her, you know, and just tell her, listen, I'm coming out here.
I do want to see you. It's not the only thing I'm going to be doing out there.
I think it would be great. But, you know, we're not getting any younger.
Let's see if this is going to work or not.
Let's spend more time together.
I'm not moving in, because that would be wildly inappropriate.
But I'll be in the vicinity.
And we can see each other as much or as little as we want.
That makes sense and I would be very ready to propose that to her.
No, no, no. You don't propose it to her.
That's what I'm saying.
Don't ask her permission. You're allowed to move wherever you want in Canada.
For now, right?
So you can just move for a couple of weeks.
I say, I'm coming out to your town for a couple of weeks.
Or you can maybe say to your boss, I'm going to take an indefinite leave of absence.
I think it's going to be a couple of weeks.
It could be a little longer. However you work that out.
You just go out there.
You can tell her it's happening.
You cannot tell her it's happening. Whatever.
Just go.
What's more important than love?
And here's the thing.
If it works out, wonderful.
If it doesn't work out, do you really want to waste another couple of years finding out it's not going to work out?
And then you'll be almost 50. Oh my God.
Then your chance, like, you understand, the reason you would do it is that if you're almost 50 as a dad, or you want to be a dad, then you're going to have to marry a woman 20 years younger than you.
Now that's going to be a challenge.
20 years younger means she was raised by crazed socialists, right?
It's going to be even more propaganda for you to deal with, right?
So that's what I mean.
Like, decisiveness in life is just get to the damn answer.
Get to the answer as quickly as humanly possible.
And right now, you guys are circling the drain.
You've been attracted to each other for three fucking years?
Really? Yes.
Three years and you don't have an answer?
Dude! Get an answer.
That doesn't mean cornering her.
It doesn't mean being a bully. Just go to the city and see if you guys enjoy spending time together face-to-face.
Don't have sex, in my advice.
Because then, if you're still indecisive and you have sex, then the hormones will cause you to bond and you still won't have the decisiveness and that's going to be destabilizing.
But you've got to get to the answer.
You know, I remember when I was starting out my business back in the 90s, and I needed investors.
And I had a guy who was like, I don't know, maybe yes, maybe so I'd have endless pitch meetings, we'd go to the business, oh yes, I don't know, right?
And eventually I just had to tell him, dude, you're so off the island.
Right? I'm spending all this time trying to pitch you, which is preventing me from pitching other people who might actually invest in the business.
He was killing my business.
Because he wasn't coming. Hey, say yes or say no.
I said, say yes or say no. I don't know.
Okay, I'll say no for you. Because I got to get this business going, man.
And then I went and pitched other people.
We got the money. We started the business.
And we went from there. But this maybe yes, maybe no shit.
It'll just drain your life.
Like, you're not immortal.
You don't have time to burn here, man.
You're in your 40s. You don't have time to burn.
I know, I know, I know. Otherwise, nature's going to make the decision for you.
Right? She's going to get too old.
And she's not getting younger either.
If you want a family, you don't have three years to burn.
What are you, crazy? I'm glad you called.
I really am. It's fantastic.
But get to the answer.
This is a key thing in life.
Get to the answer. Get to the answer.
Yes or no. And whatever, like, the more important the question, you just pour resources in until you get the answer.
Whatever decision you got to do.
You know, if you've got a relationship, it's kind of yes, kind of no, kind of in, kind of out.
Get to the answer. If it's long distance, go move there and you'll spend three weeks learning what three years hasn't taught you.
But you're all just circling around like you're immortal.
Guess what? You're not. Eggs are dying.
Sperm is decaying. Time's passing.
I mean, come on. You're going to be a dad in your 50s?
You're going to be in your 70s when your kids get too adulted.
Don't you want to be a granddad and enjoy that with some robustness?
Get to the answer, people.
Get to the answer.
It's what I did with social media.
You got to the answer. Am I going to silence everything about what I say?
No. Because that's not having an answer, right?
Does that help?
Yes, thank you very much.
I will make you an additional donation for that.
That's your choice. I don't do it for the donations in this way, but if it helps, I appreciate that.
I just want to get you to the answer because if the answer is not this woman...
Then you've got to cut this off, like, right away.
Because the thing is, the longer you get enmeshed with people, the longer it takes to unmesh yourself.
Like, you're not your mom. You can't just ditch a 21-year relationship and the next day go out with someone new because you're not a weird, isolated freak that way, right?
I mean, your mom is way more isolated than you are, just so you know, right?
Your mom is way more isolated than you are because she doesn't bond with anyone, as far as I can tell.
I have already accepted that it would not work with that woman.
I just find sad because she's the best reference I have.
Wait, which woman? This woman we were just talking about?
Yes, yes. Wait, what now?
I feel like the rug just got pulled out from under me.
So we're talking about a relationship that isn't going to work out.
Because she doesn't want me to do such a move.
She's too afraid of what it implies.
Okay. Can she legally prevent you from moving where you want to move?
Of course not.
Okay. So, I don't know about it.
Look, I mean...
Why are we... So, you can move to her city...
Now, I get, you know, it's going to be tough to have no expectations, but you're going there to just find out.
Now, you guys go out for a coffee, you go out for dinner.
If you find that you kind of stand to sight of each other, I mean, whatever crazy thing could happen, okay, just move back, right?
You give her all the space she wants.
If she's busy for the weekend, you find you go to an art gallery, you meet up with some friends that you maybe can find through the internet or something like that.
You go to a park, you pick up Pickleball, Michelle Malkin style, whatever you want to do, right?
And so... If she wants to see you, she sees you.
If she doesn't want to see you, she doesn't want to see you.
But at least, you know, you spend two weeks, probably all it takes, right?
You spend two weeks to get the answer.
You should have done this three years ago, in my humble opinion, but you didn't, right?
So, but if the moment I say, because you said, oh, we can't decide, I propose for all these things, and then the moment I say, here's the answer, right?
Just go out and see if you like each other's company.
And then you say, well, I've already accepted the relationship isn't going to work out.
You understand? That's a complete redirect from what we were talking about before.
I accept that she doesn't want me to do that and that it makes her feel a lot of pressures and anxiety about that.
So I don't want to cause her anxiety.
Okay, then go for one week.
This show, you're going to make it public.
She's going to listen to it anyway.
Okay, well, I will tell her to call in.
And what's she doing?
I mean, you get together or you don't.
Right? This three years shit?
I mean, come on. I mean, that's bad enough when you're in your 20s, but you're in your 40s, right?
So this, well, you know, it's going to be too much pressure, blah, blah, blah.
That's her issue to handle.
Now, if you go out there and she says, I can't believe you came here.
I never want to see you again. Okay, then you get on a flight and you go home.
And then you delete her from your contacts and you never have anything to do with her again.
Ever. Not because she's a bad person or whatever.
It's just like, okay, if it's not going to be you, I need to start hammering back my pair bonding so that I'm available emotionally for someone else.
But right now, you guys are stuck in perpetual flirt mode, right?
Kind of, yes. But you've got to get to an answer.
Sorry, go ahead. We do as if the answer was no, but we still talk to each other.
And when did you decide that the relationship wasn't going to work out?
Because I tried to propose her a lot of things like we just talked about and she said no, that she felt pressure and she wants me to stop talking about it.
Okay, so she doesn't want you to be in the same city?
Or was it moving in together?
Was that the issue she had? Because I'm with her on that.
Yes, I agree with that.
But I was trying to offer her something like that we could spend time together, a solution so that we could spend time together.
Okay, because I'm really baffled here, right?
I mean, you've got to just be straight with me.
At least I'm begging you to, right?
Was the plan for you to live together when you visited each other?
The plan was to know each other better.
No, this is a yes or come.
Come on, man. Yes or no?
You're an aircraft engineer, right?
Just give me a straight answer, right?
Is the plane ready to fly?
Yes or no, okay? I'm not criticizing and I just need to understand what the barrier is because you guys are obviously attracted to each other.
You share philosophical values.
You care about each other.
You've had a three-year relationship. What's the barrier here?
Now, if the barrier is that your plan was to live together, that can be solved.
Right? But if there's some esoteric who-knows-what going on, that's a different matter, right?
And so this is not a, oh, it's bad for you.
I understand exactly. I've sympathized.
This is not a criticism standpoint.
I'm just trying to map the room, okay?
Was the plan to live together while you tried to figure out if you were compatible?
Yes. Okay, fantastic.
Okay, so that's a solvable problem.
It's very... Just go see her, but don't live together.
That's easy to solve.
In fact, if she wants, you can be on one side of the town, she can be on the other.
Whatever. You don't have to take a place next door.
Right? And then you're in the same town.
You say, hey, I'll be here for a couple of weeks.
You know, we're not going to be glued to the hip 24-7.
We're just... Going to see.
I've got other things to do. I've always wanted to visit this museum.
They've got a great air museum.
And, you know, I want to check out their farming methods wherever, right?
And I've got some friends to see there.
So, but let's...
I'm going to be here. I'm not going to live together.
That was a bad idea. And I apologize because that's going from zero to a hundred.
That's going from pen pals to married.
And that's way too fast.
And you can't find out if you're compatible when you're sharing a toothbrush, right?
I mean, that's putting the cart before the horse.
From what I understand, if I do that, she's afraid of what's going to have to come next, that one of us is going to have to leave his life in his province to move with the other.
She's afraid of that.
So, I mean, that's her fear.
Why does that dominate what you do?
I will tell her what you just told me and if she really...
Okay, let me tell her.
Let me tell her. Let me tell her.
You tell her. Obviously, it's your relationship, but I will tell her.
Look, he seems like a great guy.
He's a little dodgy, sometimes tough to get a straight answer, but, you know, that's fine.
That's fine. He's a great guy, smart guy, and intellectually curious, a great communicator, and, you know, is a good guy.
Professional, employed, slender, tall, good-looking, and all that.
Plus, you won't have to deal with a mother-in-law on your face who's dysfunctional, which is good.
It's a good thing. Okay. Now, you are feeling anxious, About taking the relationship to the next level.
Okay, I understand that because it might not work out.
But you understand it's already not working out because you're already not getting married and having children if that's what you want.
I assume it's what you want because he wants to be a dad, right?
So already you've burned up three years of fertility circling the drain of this relationship.
So you've already failed.
You've got nothing to lose. You've already failed because you've invested three years and you still don't know whether it's going to work out or not.
So you've already had a massive failure.
And so the idea that things could go wrong if you are close physically to each other, but it might not work out.
You can only believe that that's a problem if you overlook the last three years of failure, wherein you have invested Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours and your heart and mind and soul and you've probably not dated other people because of this relationship and you still don't know whether it's going to work out.
That is a catastrophic failure and it's like you're walking away from a car crash worrying you might stub your toe.
So have this fine man come to the vicinity.
Oh, but that's pressure. He might have expectations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
He's allowed to have expectations.
You're allowed to say no to those expectations, of course.
But first of all, you care about him, which is why you're concerned about whether he'll feel rejected if it doesn't work out or you care about yourself.
That's great. But you've got to get to the answer.
You've got to get to the answer because time marches on whether we make decisions or not.
You have a certain number of days left in your life, left in your existence.
You have a certain number of days.
Yes. No, I'm talking to her.
You've got more days because you're a dude.
And the shelf life for balls is way better than eggs, right?
So, yeah, you have a shelf life.
You have a number of days left in your life and you have a number of days left in your fertility window, which are a lot shorter than his, right?
So it's doing more harm to you circling the drain than him, right?
And this is why he's pushing for a resolution and why you're crazy to not.
And I don't mean crazy like that's a bad thing, but it's just I'm trying to give you the perspective that will help you propel the decision, right?
If you care about this man and it sounds like you guys are half in love, if not in love, then be in the same vicinity and figure out whether you like each other.
Now, you don't have to spend all day together every day.
You know, he's going to have things to do.
You have things to do.
But you can hang out and see if you like each other.
That's what people do when it's a long distance relationship and they need to find out whether it works or not if they spend time together.
There's no other way to do it.
There's no other way to do it.
It's this or nothing.
Now, if you choose the nothing, well, are you going to wait for someone better to come along?
Somebody more in alignment with your values?
Somebody who's employed, good-looking, slender, tall, healthy, philosophical?
Are you going to wait?
How many of these guys are coming along in your life?
I mean, what is your upgrade from this?
This is a really important question to ask in relationships.
What is your upgrade? I remember very clearly being on the hike with my then-girlfriend, soon to be fiancé, then to be wife.
I remember being on the hike with her, and I felt this great feeling of peace come over me, and I was like, I can't upgrade from this.
I cannot upgrade from this.
She's incredibly smart, incredibly funny, very warm, very together, slender, athletic, pretty.
Great sense of humor. Positive spirit.
I can get a little Dostoevsky in from time to time.
And she's buoyant in a way that I can only envy.
Like, I can't... What am I waiting for?
I can't do better than this.
I can't. There's no upgrade from here.
Now, if you are in a no-upgrade scenario, and looking back, before I got that feeling, I could see why I hadn't settled down before, because I always felt that there was something better.
And I was right! But with this, I mean, my gosh, I can't upgrade.
And, you know, we've been married 18 years, and I feel even more certain now than I did almost 20 years ago on that hike, watching her climb some slippery rock.
I feel even more certain now.
Than I did almost 20 years ago, that no upgrade was possible.
I can't do better. I think she can't do better either.
I mean, I'm not supplicating.
I think we both, there's no upgrade possible for either of us.
So, if you've got anxiety about it not working out, guess what?
That's life, man. Or rather, lady, that's life.
The more you care about something, the more you care about losing it.
But you're going to lose it anyway.
You get married. You fall in love with someone.
You're going to get old. And most likely one of you is going to die before the other.
You're going to lose everything anyway.
You're going to lose your health. You're going to lose your vitality.
You're going to lose some of your intelligence.
You're going to lose the spring in your step.
You're going to lose the easy ease of a healthful youth.
And you'll be like, oh my gosh, I got them all!
So, you can lose anything anyway.
The idea that we're not going to live because we're going to lose rests on the fantasy that there's a scenario in life where we don't lose.
But we do. We will.
My daughter is here to replace me.
You're going to lose anything and everything anyway.
The only question is, Are you going to have before you lose?
That's the only question. Do you want to be poor your whole life or do you want to have wealth and then lose it?
Well, I think it's better to have wealth and then lose it.
But if you're in this fantasy where there's some way in which you can get through life without losing everything, you're wrong.
You're catastrophically wrong.
And it means that the loss is occurring every day when it doesn't have to.
You're going to lose everything at the end of your life.
Look at Nancy Reagan.
Ronald Reagan, she called it the long goodbye.
I think he had Alzheimer's or dementia or something like that.
It took him forever to die.
And for years and years and years before he died, he just wasn't there progressively.
Now, would it have been better for her To never have loved him, never have had children?
You're going to say goodbye anyway.
Just don't say goodbye in the here and now, based upon the fantasy that if you never have, you won't lose.
But you will lose.
You will lose. And the only way you don't lose is to have and create, whether you create artistically, whether you create philosophically, whether you create from a business standpoint, whether you create children.
It's the only way.
It's the only way we don't lose is to leave something of importance behind.
Don't let your gravestone be meh.
Don't let your gravestone be She's gone?
Was she here? Don't let your gravestone be that six months after your funeral is the last time anybody ever speaks your name.
You can be alive in the future even if you're invisible to the future, if you have children.
I mean, I have many ancestors, of course, who wrote down nothing and nobody remembers now.
But I'm here, so their lives had impact that way.
Don't be cremated in the here and now because you fear death later.
Don't let all of your desires turn to ashes because the worms will eat you when you're done.
Oh, but if it doesn't work out, it's not going to work out.
Life doesn't work out. You get old, you get sick and you fucking die.
Life doesn't work out.
We lose everything.
Everything decays.
We fall apart. I am now afraid of sprinting.
I could sprint a couple of years ago.
I'm now nervous to sprint.
I'm in my mid-50s.
It could hurt. It has.
Everything decays.
Everything falls apart. You're going to lose everything anyway.
The house, being death, always wins.
So bet big. If you play the slot machines, if you play roulette, if you play blackjack, or you don't play, the house wins either way.
The house takes everything you have anyway.
So why not bet big?
Why not?
You have nothing to lose because everything is going to be lost anyway.
My friend here, Manuel, is already in a state of losing, so he's got nothing to lose because he's already in a state of catastrophic loss, which is isolation.
It's the same thing with you, except you have a shorter time frame because of fertility.
Oh, I could come out here with expectations, and I don't know if I can fulfill those expectations, and it might not work.
You're going to die. You're going to die.
It should be everyone's morning mantra.
Look in the mirror and say, I'm going to die.
I'm going to die. And it'll probably be a long goodbye.
A long goodbye. But don't give death a single fucking ounce before you have to.
Don't let fear of loss, which is inevitable because we're going to lose everything anyway, don't let that fear of loss mean that you won't have.
Everyone gets old.
Everyone gets sick. And everyone dies.
You know it. I know it.
And in the flourishing of the vitality of youth and middle age, and you know, I'm still a pretty vital and energetic guy in my 50s.
I can play a good 90 minutes of pretty hard tennis.
I have no back or joint problems.
I work out. I'm a reasonable weight.
But that's just for now. I'm on the downward arc.
And listen, after our 20s, we're all on a downward arc.
We're all on a downward arc.
It's like we're on one of those log rides, you know, they go down and they hit the water, but gonna hit the water.
Grab some candy on the way, man, because you're gonna hit the water either way.
Bet big because the house always wins.
Live richly. Because you won't be able to live in time.
Love deeply because you will be consumed by plants and insects and worms.
And don't be the only thing that you leave behind is, well, he guarded well against loss.
He didn't have his heart broken.
Well, death is going to break your heart, literally, into its component atoms.
Don't let your tombstone be food for worms.
Don't let your legacy be the grass grows a little greener over the decomposing carbon of my lost life.
Don't let death win before you have to.
Don't let fear of loss win before you have to.
Death will pry everything you love from your hands and smash it to the emptiness of eternity.
And that's the best case scenario.
The worst case scenario is your absence then leaves a heartbroken society, family, friendship, or world behind.
But you're going to get broken up and scattered to the winds of time no matter what you do.
And in fact, in fact, I believe that death comes sooner for those who don't love because of the isolation, the depression, the anxiety, the stress.
And we can imagine, of course, that the tribes wherein those who did not contribute, the next generation, or anything of significant value but were in a sense useless eaters as the harsh Marxist phrase goes that those societies wherein the isolated and unproductive lived forever well they'd have fewer resources for their children and probably wouldn't survive as well so there are evolutionary pressures on a life of lonely loss being shorter than a life of rich bliss if you don't If you pay death,
death comes sooner. It's like a blackmailer, right?
If you pay the blackmailer, it'll come back for more.
If you live for fear of loss, I believe it moves the loss of life closer to you every year, every year, every year.
Oh, you're not living? Okay, we'll move that grave up one year.
Oh, still not living? Going to move up.
Oh, he's still letting fears overwhelm you?
We'll move that grave up one year.
Fuck that. Live.
Take risks. Impose.
Don't violate the non-aggression principle.
Keep your promises. But never be afraid to ask.
Never be afraid to demand.
Never be afraid to hear a no and walk away.
We've got a short time.
Aim to have a short life, right?
Because time flies when you're having fun.
You want to have a long life, be unhappy, right?
Am I somewhere over the mark, Manuel?
Yeah, it's very great.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome, Willie. Let me know how it goes.
And listen, if you're the woman listening to this, call in.
Happy to chat. Happy to chat, as always.
When it will be released as a podcast, I will send her the link and she could decide if she wants to talk to you.
I don't think she will, but...
That would be great. Well, she should.
She should. I'm a very nice person.
All right. Thanks, everyone, so much.
I really, really appreciate it.
I'm sorry we didn't get to the second caller.
I will do an extra call-in show this week because we've been going long on calls, and I don't want everyone to feel, oh, if I'm second, I'll never get to talk.
So I'll do another call-in this week through James.
Thanks again, as always, to James for keeping the heartbeat of the show flowing.
Thank you for the callers. Thank you for my supporters.
My two free books, really check them out, man.
If you love my non-fiction, you'll love my fiction even more.
freedomain.com forward slash almost and you can also go to fdrurl.com forward slash TGOA for the God of Atheists for the audiobook of my dark comedy novel set in the software world.
So, thanks everyone so much.
Love you guys. Have a great day.
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