Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

April 30, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:27:37

HOW TO STAY SANE!

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Yes, that's right.
	Good evening. It is the 29th of April 2022.
	Oh, I have some things for you tonight.
	All the stuff, all the things we can't leave behind.
	Every piece of philosophy that I just have not been able to get into the shows recently is coming your way tonight.
	But first, but first, and of course foremost, you, the gorgeous, dare I say, downright sexy listenership.
	Let's get you going.
	Am I going to talk about Amber crapping the bed?
	Well, you've heard of Elf on a Shelf.
	Well, there's Herd on a Turd.
	And yeah, there are people, and I'll get to this tonight, but there are people in life Who will do anything to win.
	They have no compunction, no standards, no limit.
	They would do absolutely anything to win.
	And they're absolutely terrifying to have in your life.
	Because they'll just...
	Because, you know, life involves conflict.
	And if you're with someone who'll do anything, anything, anything to win, then what happens is you get eroded.
	You know, like sand castles under waves.
	You get eroded and All you can do is apologize and all you can do is surrender and all you can do is bow and scrape and apologize and beg.
	You end up not existing.
	When you become a manipulator, you don't have an identity of your own.
	You don't have a personality of your own.
	You're like water. And so you end up, because you don't exist yourself, you end up fundamentally erasing everyone around you.
	Personalities spread like the flu, right?
	So, yeah. Are we doing Telegram?
	No, I don't think so.
	I don't think so. So, let's see here.
	Let me just check your questions if you have anything.
	Don't turn this into a shite show.
	God, gross, she's trash.
	Well, I mean, I simply assume that that level of...
	I don't know for sure.
	I did try looking up her childhood, but there doesn't seem to be much around.
	When you see someone with that level of just...
	Can't possibly admit that they're wrong or gaslight, manipulate, be violent, and drive people insane simply to never admit that she's wrong.
	Like, a lot of people conflate that with, like, vanity or narcissism and so on.
	And, yeah, okay, there's that aspect to it.
	But the most fundamental thing about that is that when you grow up with the punishment for being wrong...
	Like death, in a sense, for being wrong.
	Like if you grew up in a family where to admit fault is to stereotype yourself forever as the person who's just wrong, right?
	So if you grew up in a dysfunctional family, then what happens is you're going to make mistakes.
	You're going to have an error from time to time.
	Probably quite a few. It's life, right?
	And then what happens is if you admit fault, then you lose all credibility in a dysfunctional situation, right?
	It's like for the hard left, like one error, one mistake, one bad tweet, and you're done, right?
	There's no possibility for...
	The natural ebb and flow and flux of people making mistakes.
	It doesn't exist, right? They're waiting to pounce once they pounce.
	They're simply recreating their childhoods where if you make a mistake and then you admit that you made a mistake and you say, yes, I'm sorry, I was wrong, then the next time you're certain of anything, do you know what people will say in your environment?
	Of course you know what people will say if they're in your environment.
	What they'll say is, oh, right, okay.
	So you're absolutely certain of this, exactly the same way that you were certain of the last time when you were totally wrong and admitted it afterwards.
	So, yeah, okay, we'll just take you as being totally certain of that, the same way you were certain.
	You can never, ever be right again.
	In other words, you can never, ever trust your own consciousness, you can never have any credibility, and you just can't exist in that situation, right?
	So, it is...
	Brutal. So, when...
	Annihilation panic is something, and I'm going to get into this tonight, annihilation panic is something that...
	It's really not very well understood.
	Annihilation panic is when you feel it's a fate worse than death for something to happen, right?
	For some people it's if their political opponents get free speech, right?
	For some people it's if they hear information that goes directly against the narrative.
	For some people it's if they see the negative results of the ideologies that they've espoused.
	There's something which is an annihilation panic for people.
	For ideologues it's whether or not Their ideology is validated.
	Like once you've poured yourself into an ideology, you've lost your capacity to think for yourself.
	You've outsourced your thinking to the cult leaders of ideology.
	Now once you've outsourced your thinking, you've outsourced your identity, your being, your everything.
	And if the ideology turns out to be wrong, then you sold your soul for nothing.
	Not even a bag of gold, like a bag of rocks.
	So... Let's see here.
	Let's get to other questions and comments.
	Hello, hello, everybody. Steph, what happened when Izzy became friends with the violently parented kids?
	No, no, she's never been friends with the violently parented kids.
	No, no, that wouldn't.
	No, that would be... No, that would be wrong.
	Hello, hello. So, let me just check here.
	Sorry I missed your explanation, but why does early exposure to sexual content produce R-selected behavior?
	Yeah, so if you look at...
	The more primitive the culture, the fewer barriers there are between children and sexual activity.
	So you think of the Victorian culture, where a woman really wasn't even allowed to show an ankle, where the couple slept in separate beds sometimes, sexual activity was kept incredibly far away from the children.
	Think of I Love Lucy, one of the big battles was the Ricardos.
	It was Ricky Ricardo and Lucille Ball, their characters were supposed to be married, well, were married in real life, and they were married in the show.
	And they had to have separate beds.
	Like they couldn't be in the same...
	They couldn't show a big king-size or queen-size bed, right?
	So if you want your children to grow up to be mature, responsible, pair-bonded, and so on, you need to keep them away from sexual stimuli for as long as possible, right?
	So they can't be walking in on their parents having sex.
	They can't be hearing things. They can't, right...
	Because the earlier that children experience sexual content, the more that they're programmed into non-pair-bonded behavior.
	Because there's no particular difference between adults and children.
	Because childhood is not recognized as a separate state.
	Because children are not protected from things they can't understand.
	So if you're a child and you hear sexual noises, it sounds like pain.
	right?
	It sounds like agony.
	It sounds like, it's very indistinguishable for children, the sounds of, I don't know, dental drilling from Laurence Olivier to Dustin Hoffman versus, you know, an orgasm or something like that.
	So you want to keep your children away from sexual stimuli because that's a way of taking care of children.
	It's a way of having respect for what children can and cannot process and understand.
	And so the earlier that children are exposed to sexual content, the less they experience themselves as separate treasured items and And of course, what happens is they will then naturally get fascinated by sexual activity.
	And then when it comes time to evaluating a partner, they'll look much more for sexual appeal than they will for quality of character, which again puts you in the R-selected stuff and all that.
	So yeah, it's really, really bad. It's really terrible.
	And unfortunately, really, really common.
	Ah, let's see here.
	What do you think the root cause of Schadenfreude is?
	So Schadenfreude is when you have pleasure in other people's bad luck.
	Well, I think Schadenfreude is the reaction formation to vanity, right?
	So there's a lot of people who will put themselves forward as having a perfect life.
	And that's really annoying for others.
	Especially if that perfect life is based upon things which can't be reproduced.
	If you think, oh, you know, if you say, well, I have a perfect life because I'm just so dashedly handsome.
	Well, handsome you can't...
	You can work on your physique and so on, but you can't really work on your face that much, at least not without a lot of horrible surgery, right?
	So if you...
	Have a perfect life because you're a great singer, you're really talented, you are good-looking, and so on.
	Then this is all things that can't be reproduced in others, which is why.
	Or if you have a lot of money, right?
	So you see all these kids, these TikTok kids or these Telegram kids who are jetting off all over the place because their parents are rich and give them money.
	Well, you can't reproduce that.
	You can't reproduce that in others.
	Other people can't just be born to wealthy parents.
	So here's something that you simply can't reproduce.
	And so when people take a lot of pride in accidents of circumstance that other people can't reproduce, other people then become invested in the downfall of those people.
	Now, if you talk about, I mean, as I talk about, you know, virtue and integrity and honor and so on, you can reproduce these things.
	You can reproduce them better than I can, I'm sure, sometimes, right?
	So I'm not trying to sort of show, oh, here's my wonderful life, and you can't have any of it, and that just evokes envy, and it's vanity, and it's a very destructive cycle.
	But if you put...
	This is why love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous.
	Right? So if I said, well, in order to be loved, you have to be really eloquent, you have to have a high IQ, you have to, I don't know, whatever, right?
	Then it would be, okay, things that you probably don't have that much control over in your life.
	And then it would be like, oh, well, it can't be loved, right?
	And then that would be terrible.
	That would be kind of disempowering, right?
	Yeah. And so when people take as a personal virtue or a personal value something which they did not create, then we all end up rooting for their downfall.
	And that's pretty rough.
	Does giving your kid an allowance train them to need free stuff through adulthood?
	No. No.
	Giving them an allowance teaches them to...
	Process cost-benefit analyses, right?
	And it allows them to make a choice, right?
	So if your kid wants some piece of frou-frou trash that's in a store, it's like, okay, well, you have your allowance.
	You can buy it.
	Now they can make the decisions based upon their own factors.
	Now, my daughter a year or two ago said that she didn't want an allowance anymore because she would rather do things like do work, right?
	So that, I mean...
	No, it doesn't teach them. It's not free stuff.
	But look, your kids are going to get free stuff no matter what, right?
	It's not like they're paying rent or grocery bills at the age of five, right?
	Steph, do you have any thoughts about the war in Ukraine and the price of Bitcoin?
	Is Russia using the conflict to destroy the petrodollar?
	I think that people are responding to the war with Pre-existing plans but they didn't start the war in order to enact those plans in my humble opinion.
	I mean, I think that now that China and Russia are working together and the age of free stuff is kind of over for Europe, which is probably going to be healthy for Europe as a whole.
	Europe evolved on scarcity and predictability.
	If you have scarcity without predictability, you are selected.
	If you have scarcity with predictability, you are selected.
	Europe arose on scarcity, but basically since the end of the Second World War, they've outsourced all of their defense to the U.S. We've lived on this debt, psychosis debt bubble, and the age of the free delusory stuff is coming to a close, which is tragic but helpful.
	Listening to you live, way more fun than any other form of media.
	Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
	Have you ever spoken about people who try to claim to be victims of something that is almost unprovable, i.e.
	like being a victim of climate change?
	Well, there's one thing I forgot to mention when I was talking about the victimhood stuff in my Twitter conversation from Wednesday night.
	So here is a surefire way to find out if somebody's faking victimhood.
	Are you ready? Are you ready?
	Here's a surefire way to find out if someone is faking victimhood.
	If somebody is faking victimhood, then when you point out the possibility that they're faking victimhood, they will get enraged.
	Every time. Every time.
	If somebody's faking victimhood, they're manipulating you through victimhood, then if you point that out as a possibility and something that you need to be careful of, you know...
	Yes. I mean, so, you know, from the beginning, I've said, look, I'm pretty eloquent.
	I can paint pretty good word pictures.
	I'm pretty good with metaphors and analogies and so on.
	So I use these to illustrate, but don't be persuaded by the analogies.
	They're just there to help, right?
	Right. Think for yourself, and I'm going to tell you how to think, not what to think, and all that, right?
	Because there's lots of charismatic people who are eloquent out there, who are very persuasive, who look you in the eye and tell you all sorts of nonsense, and so on.
	And this is why I gave away stuff for free, to reduce the cynicism of, oh, he's just drifting for the money, because, you know, Lord knows philosophy's always been just an OnlyFans easy way to show your cleavage.
	And get some cash.
	So when people say, well, you know, what if Steph's just talking a good talk and isn't really doing it for real, and if he just wants money, that's reasonable questions to ask.
	It's completely and totally reasonable questions to ask in this world.
	And as I was saying, if you've never thought you're the bad guy, you're almost certainly the bad guy.
	If you've never thought you might be the bad guy, you're almost certainly the bad guy.
	And if people say to me, you know, well, Steph, you're just like some eloquent salesman and it's all surface and you're just out there shilling for donations and stuff, okay, look, that's a reasonable question to ask about anyone.
	I don't get mad at that.
	I don't get mad at that at all.
	That's... That's totally reasonable.
	Totally reasonable thing to ask, right?
	And I'm glad that people are asking it, and you should ask it, of course, of everyone you listen to, and so on, right?
	So, because I'm really desperately trying to spread reason, facts, evidence, and philosophy across the world, and do need a bit of an income to do that, because, you know, man's got to eat, but...
	I'm not offended when people are skeptical of my motives and so on.
	Right now, if it's a straight-up attack, yeah, that's less reasonable, right, if there's no evidence and so on.
	But yeah, absolutely, be skeptical, be skeptical.
	In fact, when I wrote, like 12 or 13 years ago, I wrote, universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics, wherein I made the absolutely wild claim that I had solved the problem of morality for all time, across all circumstances.
	That I had been able to prove morality without the authority of God or the guns of the government.
	That I had proven universal objective morality beyond the shadow of a doubt.
	And it passed the basic requirement of Aristotle that it ban rape, theft, assault and murder at a bare minimum and respected property rights and justified self-defense.
	Like all the basics that you'd expect from a rational system of ethics.
	That I had solved the problem of ethics.
	I have some training in philosophy.
	I have a graduate degree.
	My graduate thesis was on the history of philosophy.
	I've taken full-year courses on Aristotle and other thinkers and read extensively in philosophy and been evaluated and so on, right?
	So I know a little bit about these things.
	But the proof of secular ethics, a rational proof of secular ethics is subtitled for the book.
	Now... And you should read it.
	My goodness, you should read the book.
	I mean, if there's one thing we all desperately need, it's clarity on ethics from a philosophical standpoint.
	Now, at the very beginning of that book, I said, what are the odds that the book you're holding in your hand actually proves rational ethics without God's recovery?
	What are the odds? What are the odds that some guy out here on the internet has caught and captured and nailed down the Holy Grail of philosophy, which is a rational proof of secular ethics?
	The odds are tiny.
	It's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous claim.
	I get that. Because you've got to acknowledge these things.
	If I was just like, well, yes, of course, I've solved secular ethics and philosophers have been striving to achieve this for thousands of years, but by golly, I just wandered out of the software field and solved the whole damn thing and I'm going to stroll on to do something?
	Right? You have to recognize the size of what you're doing and the skepticism that people are going to have for it, which they should have.
	The number of people who claim to have solved the problem of morality while then producing hell on earth is, it's legion.
	It's legion. So if somebody's manipulating you and they're pretending to be a victim and you say, well, honestly, you could be faking it and they get really angry or they get really upset or they just, you know, they just jumped down your throat or they're very volatile or whatever, right? As opposed to, yeah, look, there's lots of people out there who fake victimhood for resources.
	Tons of people out there who pretend to be victims in order to get resources to manipulate and control.
	So, of course, it makes perfect sense, right?
	In the same way that I say many, many philosophers have taken a run at secular ethics.
	The odds that I've solved it are tiny.
	I have, but I recognize that the odds that I've solved it and that I'm some guy you've never heard of.
	I'm not the chair of the philosophy department at Yale or Stanford.
	I'm just some guy you've never heard of.
	Who's coming from a software executive background.
	You don't really know much about my training in philosophy.
	You don't know how long I've been working on this stuff.
	You know, when I have an NFT, you can go to freedomainnfts.com.
	I wrote the Rationalist Manifesto in my 20s, early 20s.
	My response to the Communist Manifesto worked really hard on ethics.
	So I finally solved secular ethics in my early 40s, late 30s, early 40s.
	So I've been working on the problem for 20 years.
	You know, after 20 years, wow, look, I just had a sudden breakthrough.
	It's like Huey Lewis, like the 20-year overnight success, right?
	So that's how you tell.
	That's how you tell. If people are using weakness as a tool to manipulate you, when you point that out as a possibility, they'll get angry.
	Let's see here. UPP is the how of ethics.
	Does it provide the why, or does that come from outside?
	Yeah, see, I wrote the book because trying to explain it is a bit of a challenge.
	I mean, I can explain it, but it's a long challenge, so just read the book and come back with questions, but don't ask someone to take the life's work and distill it down for you in a very short thing, right?
	What does Izzy do for money?
	Well, she does chores, she does work, and she produces things and all of that, so...
	This is better than a live NFL draft.
	I imagine so.
	I hope so. I hope so.
	Oh, F yeah. Sexy Steph stream filled with good shite.
	Roll your wisdom check to make sure you understand.
	Not an intelligence check.
	In a world of billions of people, the odds of someone figuring out a decent, the odds of that person being you, are what is extremely small.
	So hit me with a Y if you ever read Douglas Adams, particularly Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
	Did you ever read Douglas Adams?
	Yeah, I mean, he's pretty common.
	I remember being in the bookstore in the Don Mills Mall.
	I read the beginning about how people were unhappy Because they thought digital watches were a really cool thing.
	I remember reading that thinking, should I buy this?
	This is back when I could buy maybe one book a month.
	And I remember reading it over and over again, like, ooh, should I buy it?
	Should I buy it? And so on. And the book is funny.
	The movies almost never were.
	But the books were funny. So, in it...
	There is a comedy bit where the Earth is a giant computer and it's been programmed to figure out the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything.
	Why are we here? What is the purpose of life?
	And so on. And after millions of years, the Earth computer spat out the answer, which was the number 42.
	Number 42. Now, before the answer to life, the universe, and everything got spit out, a bunch of philosophers came and they were really angry because this computer was going to be taking away their job by giving them the answer, by giving everyone the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
	And... Anyway, the answer was, well, you can debate whether it's right or not.
	That's the best you can do. And it turns out that the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42.
	Problem is, we don't know what the question is.
	So then they had to build another computer that was even bigger.
	Maybe that was the Earth. I can't remember.
	But they had to build another computer that was even bigger to figure out what the question is, for which the answer to life, the universe, and everything is the number 42.
	It's cute, and it's funny, and so on, right?
	But the reason why...
	The answer to morality...
	Because theology has an answer for morality, which is God's commandments, but that's not a philosophical answer.
	And for those who are skeptical of theology, of religion, we need an answer which is rational, which isn't just some reciprocal altruism crap that sort of dork and stuff, because that's all nonsense, and that is genetic proximity tribalism, which has done a lot of harm to...
	The world in the 20th century, particularly, of course, when combined with the state.
	So why did it have to wait for me?
	Well, it wasn't waiting for me, right?
	The answer to philosophy in the realm of ethics, the ultimate answer to philosophy in the realm, wasn't waiting for me.
	It was waiting for this technology.
	Because the reason why I put all of this work into answering the question of secular morality, what is goodness?
	Why be good? What is virtue?
	The reason I put all of this work into answering it was because there was a platform That I could spread it, right?
	You don't fish in the bathtub because there's no fish there, right?
	And once I started publishing articles, I realized, of course, that I had a readership, I had an audience, and therefore working on solving the problem of ethics would have a purpose, right?
	I could get it out.
	I can get it out to people.
	So... It had to wait for the technology that bypassed all the gatekeepers.
	Do philosophers want an answer?
	That's a fundamental question. Do philosophers actually want an answer to the question of ethics?
	And the answer is no.
	Historically, philosophers absolutely do not want an answer, a secular rational answer to the question of ethics, a question of virtue.
	They do not want it. Why?
	Why? Because philosophers throughout most of human history were court toadies.
	They were paid by the state.
	They were protected by the state.
	They praised the state in general.
	They justified the state.
	Or, if you want to be more generous, which is certainly possible, we can't read minds, but if you want to be more generous, you would say all prior philosophers were dependent upon the state for survival.
	In other words, they were regularly killed if they did anything to threaten the size and power and strength of the state.
	And so, you know, they all saw Socrates.
	They all saw what was tried to be done to Aristotle, who had to flee, saying he would not allow Athens to sin against philosophy twice.
	They saw what happened to Plato, who tried in Syracuse to enter into politics and ended up being sold into slavery and was only liberated for the sum of 20 dinars, if I remember rightly, by someone who happened to recognize him because he was a former student, right?
	So philosophers generally don't do well under the state if they think clearly and rationally for themselves.
	So philosophers have a Stockholm Syndrome or outright bribed relationship to the state.
	I mean, look at philosophers now, right?
	Philosophers in academia, right?
	What are they paid for? Well, they're paid by the fact that the state does not allow students to discharge student debt and bankruptcy.
	And because the state does not allow students to discharge student debt in bankruptcy, professors get massively paid.
	The state puts up these high requirements of having a PhD and going through a committee and becoming usually a professor's assistant or a teacher's assistant.
	And then maybe you get a job part-time, then maybe you get a job full-time, and then eventually you can go for tenure, and then you can't be fired.
	All of these requirements are put in place by the state.
	So they're protected by the state, they're licensed by the state, competition is kept out of their environment by the state, their summer's off, their sabbaticals, they're working 15 hours a week for $200,000 a year, it's all protected by the state.
	How the fuck can a philosopher be remotely objective about the pampered zookeepers that keep them in gold and honey?
	They can't possibly be objective.
	So if the answer to morality is the universality of ethics that forbids the initiation of the use of force, the state being an agency which initiates the use of force, Could philosophers who relied on the state for survival or freedom or income or protection, could they possibly get to the universality of morality?
	No. Absolutely not.
	Absolutely. And when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
	It is impossible to ask a philosopher to undermine the system that gives him not just money, But power!
	Power over his students.
	Power to give or withhold the golden ticket of the PhD in the tenure-track position.
	Power to have people look up at him and worship him as a wise elder.
	Power to get money.
	Power to have prestige.
	I teach. I'm the chair of philosophy at XYZ University.
	I'm a big deal.
	No, they don't.
	Why on earth would they want to solve the problems of a system that serves them so well when the solution to that system is something that would put them back out there in the free market of ideas, right?
	Why? They have no need to engage.
	Yeah, university professors teach the same thing year after year while you teach new stuff every show.
	Absolutely. Absolutely. No wonder my philosophy professor in university advocated for state power.
	Of course! They're bought and owned by the state.
	I got a compressor, so hopefully I didn't yell your ears off.
	It should take care of the volume changes, right?
	Of course, government protects these guys.
	What are they going to tell the truth about government?
	No, of course not. Absolutely not.
	Absolutely not. Even my engineering teachers were political, it was nuts.
	I loathed all the teachers by the end.
	They were all just clones. Well, here's the thing, right?
	Anybody who wants to think independently cannot survive a single source of income.
	You with me? Anyone who wants to think independently cannot survive a single source of income.
	Because if you have a single source of income, which is why no advertising, donors spread all over the world, thankyoufreedomain.com forward slash donate.
	I mean, I say that you're the reason I can do this.
	It's not hyperbole. I'm not kidding.
	You are absolutely the reason that this is even remotely possible.
	This lodestone of light by which future generations can guide their reasoning.
	Yeah. Yeah. We're a team.
	We're absolutely a team.
	Completely and totally a team.
	This is why I prefer doing live streams and couldn't really imagine going back to just solo shows, speaking to a camera on my own.
	So we're a team. Whoever pays you owns you.
	They're not just buying your time when you're talking about the realm of ideas.
	They're buying your soul. They're buying your soul.
	And once people's personal sense of value gets dependent upon a corrupt and violent system, they'll fight almost literally to the death to protect that system.
	Absolutely. My ethics prof did bring up some good arguments, turned me pro-life.
	Great. I think that's wonderful, but he didn't solve the problem of ethics.
	Good arguments is not philosophy.
	There could be good arguments that A salesman would have as to why you should buy a particular car.
	Doesn't mean that's philosophy.
	You understand? Okay.
	Are you ready? For the new stuff.
	I got two new things tonight. Two new things.
	Do you want the topic?
	Hit me with the one if you want a topic on mental health.
	Hit me with a two if you want to understand immorality first.
	One, mental health.
	Two, understanding immorality.
	Give us a rant.
	What am I, just some rant machine who takes his toff off every time you want?
	Yes, that's exactly what I am, so.
	Oh, it's just which one first.
	Okay, so you want the mental health topic first.
	All right. All right.
	Okay, so this comes out of a conversation.
	My daughter wanted to go for lunch the other day and she was telling me about this woman somewhere on the internet who is a vegan and her dog is a vegan and she gets into lots of fights with people and so on.
	And we were talking about veganism.
	And I said, look, and she said, where do you think veganism comes from?
	I said, well, I don't know. But I said, if I had to guess, it would be something like this.
	Do you know the mental term compartmentalization?
	So compartmentalization is when you have to put things away so that you can concentrate on what it is that you're doing.
	Men are better at it than women.
	Women are wonderful at multitasking.
	Men are better at that single laser-like focus.
	It's not better or worse.
	In general, it's just particular strengths.
	And again, lots of exceptions. If you're a man, you know what I'm talking about.
	Like, we have the concentration headphones, where, you know, if you're working on something ferocious, something really concentrated, something deep, could be coding, could be writing, it could be, I don't know, untangling the Christmas tree lights, could be whatever.
	And somebody can be, like, calling your name, and it's like...
	I'm functionally deaf.
	Like, I don't... Like, I look up, I'm like...
	And I had a relative like this once.
	Well, once. I had a relative like this for many years.
	Sitting there watching TV. Call this name.
	It doesn't hear you. Like, just...
	I'm watching TV. I have no other inputs.
	It's... You know, like the horse blinders, right?
	Just focus, focus, focus, right?
	So compartmentalization is when you ignore things because you have a particular task.
	To achieve in the moment, right?
	Now...
	If you...
	Know what I'm talking about.
	Hit me with a...
	Give me a 1 to 10.
	Like 1, you can't concentrate on anything.
	10, you can concentrate.
	There can be an earthquake. And as long as it doesn't disturb whatever you're concentrating on, you finish it up.
	Hit me with a 1 to 10 on...
	Oh, you're a 10. Yeah, 8.
	You're 5, 8. Yeah, you're 7, 10.
	So you're 7, 10. Okay, so, you know, it's a bit of a sausage fest here.
	The ladies are a little lower, down around 5.
	Perfectly fine. Again, this is not a strength or weakness thing in terms of in general.
	It's just how we've...
	Evolved. Women have to multitask because they have lots of kids around.
	They all need to keep alive. Men are hunting one deer and need to bring it down in order for everyone to eat.
	So you guys are high compartmentalization, right?
	My mom who is bright takes like 30 seconds to switch focus.
	Absolutely. Absolutely.
	So I hunt 10 deer simultaneously.
	Yes, I'm sure you do.
	I have dreams too. So compartmentalization.
	Compartmentalization. Okay.
	Again, I just want to get a sense of where the audience is.
	Hit me with a 1 to 10 on how much you like a good steak.
	Hit me with a 1 to 10 on how much you like a good steak.
	Alright, so you're 11.
	9.999. I think we'll just round up a little there.
	Okay, so you guys like a good steak.
	Oh, 10, but you're a vegetarian.
	Now, when you eat a steak...
	What do you have to ignore, right?
	What do you have to ignore when you're eating a steak in order to enjoy the steak?
	What do you have to ignore?
	The poor cow. Yeah, of course.
	Dead cow. The fat, yeah.
	Suffering of the animal. Yeah, so Paul McCartney, a famous vegetarian for many decades now, he said, look, if slaughterhouses had clear walls, everybody would be a vegetarian.
	Because he's trying to break down the compartmentalization, right?
	Because you have to, you know, not think of the baby cow with the big doe eyes and the mother licking it clean and then it's suckling on her teats and growing up and gambling and learning how to walk, you know, and you've got to not think of the bolt that goes through the head, the chainsawing up of the animal, like the shipping of its hacked up carcass, you know, like you have to ignore a whole lot in order to enjoy your steak, right?
	Now, I said to my daughter, I said, look, I think that vegans are unable to...
	It's not a value judgment.
	It is not a value judgment.
	This is simply an observation, right?
	I really believe that vegans cannot compartmentalize.
	Vegans cannot compartmentalize.
	In other words, they cannot look at the steak and see vegans.
	A meal. They look at the steak and they see a sawn-off piece of cow.
	And if you've ever been to Chinese restaurants, like the really old-school Chinese restaurants, The duck comes with the head and the bill.
	It's really hard to compartmentalize if you've ever had the fish.
	So you have fish and chips. You basically just got heart-stopping fat around haddock or cod or whatever.
	But it's just white, fluffy stuff in there.
	But if you actually order, like I used to get sometimes in England, you'd have trout, right?
	When I'd be in Ireland, we'd go fishing, you'd have trout.
	And the trout would be prepared with a crusted eye and a mouth.
	You can't compartmentalize that.
	That's a fish, man.
	You might as well be flopping on the plate.
	It's a long way from a fillet of fish or whatever.
	I have fish and chips. So, in a lot of places, the food is compartmentalized.
	I remember when I was in my mid-teens, and I went to visit my father in Africa, and I went hunting and shot some turkey buzzwords.
	I can't remember exactly what they were called.
	And, yeah, asked what we were eating that night as I was chewing my way through what I thought was some rather strong chicken, and...
	It was what I had shot that day, right?
	It was what I had shot that day.
	Yeah, the pro-choice, pro-choice people, they don't want to see the abortion, they don't want to see what happens to the baby, because you have to compartmentalize.
	Now, I have an ambivalent relationship to compartmentalization, right?
	And I see the strengths, I see the weaknesses.
	So if you can't compartmentalize, then...
	Like, why do we have compartmentalization?
	The reason we have compartmentalization is we evolved with it.
	Why did we evolve with it?
	Because the people who couldn't compartmentalize, who were over-sentimental with animals, couldn't get their calories from meat and fat, couldn't get the protein, couldn't get all of the good stuff that's in meat, and had to live off, you know, fruit and nuts and berries and maybe all that.
	And... They didn't do as well because a whole source of calories was not available to them because they could not compartmentalize, right?
	So I think for vegans, and I'm sorry to use such a gross example, but if you have a dog or a cat as a pet, right, and you found out that what you were eating was your dog or your cat, you would be revolted, you would gag, you would press charges, and it would be a horrible thing, and I completely understand that and sympathize and actually agree with you.
	Because the animal that is your pet has been humanized by you.
	You have a relationship with that animal.
	And therefore, if you are going to eat that animal, you can't compartmentalize it as an other, as a blob of something, as something you don't think about, right?
	And I remember when my daughter and I were raising chickens for a while and we would feed the chickens, I don't know, some cheddar smart food and then the next day the eggs would taste of cheddar smart food and you'd basically, you know, the way that you can eat eggs is forgetting that they're unborn chickens, right? The chicken abortions or whatever horrible, like you have to compartmentalize these things.
	Oh, look, here's some fluffy white and yellow and tasty, right?
	You have to compartmentalize in order to access all the calories that you can access.
	You have to compartmentalize...
	I mean, if you're playing a sport, right?
	Let's say that you're in a long jump competition with someone...
	Well, you have to compartmentalize and dehumanize them because they want to win as much as you do.
	If you date the cheerleader that everyone wants to date, they're mad, they seethe, and you get what they want.
	You have to compartmentalize.
	You can't overempathize with your competitors.
	I mean, you will to some degree.
	You'll study their moves. If you're a boxer, you'll study their moves, or hockey players will study moves and plays, and some football players do the same thing.
	So, compartmentalization is absolutely essential.
	You know, over the course, we've been talking here now for like 42 minutes, right?
	The answer to everything is 42.
	So, we've been talking for 42 minutes.
	Now, over the course of these 42 minutes, probably at least 1,000 people have died over the world, right?
	Maybe more. I don't know. Something like that, right?
	So, without...
	If we focus on the thousand deaths, right?
	In other words, if one of those thousand people who died over the course of the show was someone I loved, the show would be over and I would shut it down.
	And if it was someone that you got a phone call, you know, someone you loved died over the last four, two minutes, you'd drop the show, you'd go and deal with that, right?
	Right, so we compartmentalize ourselves.
	All of the bad things that are happening in the world so that we can get things done, so we can enjoy great cooking, lovemaking, a movie, a concert, whatever.
	Okay, people are dying, but I'm not thinking about that.
	I can't think about that right now because otherwise if I did, imagine if you had some horrible implant in your brain that somehow you could see every death in the world as it occurred.
	People getting hit by trains, people dying of starvation, babies dying as being stillborn.
	Every single... Death that occurred would just flash across your vision.
	You would go insane.
	Now, these are all real things, right?
	This is why I was sort of saying, the teaser for this is that the denial of reality is essential for mental health.
	The denial of reality is essential for mental health.
	In other words, compartmentalization.
	It's essential, not just for getting all the calories you can get, but if you're in a sword fight with someone and they're trying to hack your head off and you're trying to hack their head off, guess what?
	You can't empathize with them too much.
	You have to compartmentalize them and feel joy in victory and terror in defeat.
	Compartmentalization. Compartmentalization.
	So I think that vegans, for better or for worse, vegans are unable to, and you know when I say unable to, this sounds like a negative judgment.
	I don't mean it that way at all.
	I'm simply pointing. I think that vegans are unable to compartmentalize the source of their food.
	In other words, vegans are accurately identifying and emotionally experiencing the source of their food.
	And they're right.
	It is a sawn up cow.
	They're absolutely right.
	And yet, and yet, the vast majority of us don't experience it that way because evolution weeds out people who can't compartmentalize because they can't get the calories, they can't win battles, they can't, you know, They empathize too much with their competitors in romance, and therefore they don't end up winning and reproducing and so on, right?
	So if you were in a culture, you traveled to some culture where you traveled with your dog, and other people killed and were eating your dog, you'd be horrified and tell them and beg them and cry to not eat it.
	Because there's no compartmentalization for your pets, right?
	They're not food. I mean, my daughter loved toads, and when we had chickens, the chickens passed on a toad and, like, Jurassic Park-style, like, tore it in tubes.
	Pretty upsetting, obviously, right?
	And we had conversations about what nature actually is, right?
	So... Compartmentalization.
	You're able to focus on what it is that I'm saying, I hope, because you're able to compartmentalize everything else that's going on in your life.
	Everything else that you could be doing, everything else maybe that you should be doing.
	Oh, why did I stop raising chickens?
	Oh, winter was just a real hassle, so we returned them to the farm.
	So, okay, so here's the thing.
	Could you enjoy a meal...
	With 50 people starving to death around you, could you enjoy a meal?
	Let's say you weren't even that hungry.
	Could you enjoy... No, of course you couldn't.
	If there were 50 people half-starved to death around you, you could not enjoy your meal.
	Now, you understand that's compartmentalization.
	That's sealing things off.
	Every meal that you have, there are at least 50, if not 5,000, if not 50,000, if not half a million people who are starving to death around the world while you're chowing down on your chow mein, right?
	Yeah. If you're a psychopath, yeah, well, a psychopath is a whole other thing.
	A psychopath has no—all they do is compartmentalize.
	There's nothing that breaks through that compartmentalization.
	So, you know, the pathological altruism is a deficiency of compartmentalization.
	Sociopathy, psychopathy is an excess of compartmentalization.
	So, you need to be able to empathize, and we would have evolved to compartmentalize, to keep at a distance, those we preyed on, those who were enemies, those who threatened our interests, and then, on the other hand, of course, we invite through these compartments our family, our children, our pets, our this, our that, right?
	Now, one of the things that's a problem in the world and a challenge and so on, right, was when I remember all of the Sally Strother stuff.
	I think it started in the 70s or whatever it was.
	And what it was was, you know, the starving kids in Africa or other places, the big bloated bellies, the giant heads and so on.
	And because those images were beamed directly to us, like that kid who drowned in Turkey, I think on the shores of Turkey because his dad was trying to get to Canada for free dental care or something like that.
	And so he drowned, and then you see that image, right?
	There was a big debate in European press about whether to show the image of that drowned child or not.
	And you understand that the image of that drowned child, it's then you see it, it breaks through the compartmentalization, right?
	In the same way that if you saw how the cow ended up being raised and chainsawed and delivered to you, you wouldn't be able to eat the steak, right?
	Because then you'd... It would break through the compartmentalization.
	So the modern world presents us all of this information that we can see if we want.
	You can go and see the slaughterhouse and how it works.
	You can go and see the starving children.
	So it breaks through this compartmentalization.
	So... Yeah, she ended up being fat after campaigning for starving children.
	Right, right, right. So, this is the big challenge, I think, of this.
	And now, hit me with a why if this kind of makes sense to you.
	And by that, I don't mean that you agree with it all, but it's a framework that sort of makes some kind of sense and hopefully helps you to understand a little bit more about the world, right?
	Hi, hello. Yeah, it's helpful, right?
	And if you look at this compartmentalization stuff...
	I'm trying to fit this into a left-right thing, which I think is important, right?
	So I think on the left, the compartmentalization is very low, right?
	The compartmentalization on the left is very low and very high.
	I hope that the framework survives this seeming paradox, right?
	So on the left...
	What you constantly hear about is, you know, a vulnerable, marginalized population that doesn't have a voice, that's overwhelmed, right?
	So they're excluded, they're out there, they're lonely, and they're sad, and what happens is that breaks through the compartmentalization and arouses the sympathy, in particular, among the women, right? Whereas for men...
	Women are generally about people should not learn from mistakes.
	And men are generally about people should learn from mistakes.
	People must. And I remember this.
	I mean, if you've been a dad, you know what that's like, right?
	I mean, at some point the mom is like, she's going to fall.
	And at some point the dad is like, well, and she'll learn to be more careful, right?
	Right? When I was teaching my daughter rollerblading because she wanted to learn, I'm like, you really should use elbow knee pads when you're starting.
	And she's like, I don't want to.
	I'm like, Okay, now she does, right?
	That's the way it works, right?
	So, when it comes to compartmentalization, if you're a woman and you're dealing with kids seven and under, or anyone, should kids six or seven or under, should they learn through trial and error, should they learn through mistakes, should they learn through injury?
	No. No, they should not, right?
	I mean, you don't sit there with a toddler and say, well, you know, I've told you about the stairs.
	If you fall down, you fall down, right?
	No, right? So you can't other toddlers, right?
	Because if you've got a 12-year-old and the 12-year-old is biking, oh, yeah, wear a helmet and all of that, right?
	But should the 12-year-old start to at least be in the process of Learning through mistakes.
	Learning through trial and error. Learning through potential injury.
	Sure. Of course they should.
	Why? Because you're a parent of the boat.
	The boat string, you've got to launch your kids out into the world.
	Now, you don't let a toddler learn what an electrical socket is and how bad it is to combine it with a fork.
	You don't let the toddler learn that.
	Because they could die. So, for women...
	What would look to men to be over-empathizing or a lack of compartmentalization.
	That's not only common, it's a beautiful part of women, of womanhood, of femininity.
	It's why we're all alive. Now, for men, though, the compartmentalization is quite strong.
	Why? Because women work much more with cooperation with other women in the co-parenting of children.
	But for men, you know, we know what it's like.
	I mean, for men, everything's a competition, right?
	Everything's a competition.
	You can turn anything...
	And this is funny, you know, like in my family, if we have something to guess or something, right?
	It's like, I'm like, okay, what are we betting for?
	It's not... As popular an approach with every other potential parent of the family.
	But yeah, I'm always like, what are we betting for?
	What if I'm right? What if you're right?
	What do we get? Are we betting for money?
	Are we betting for what we do this afternoon?
	What are we betting for, right?
	Or I was out with some friends the other day and the bill came and I offered to pay and they offered to pay.
	I'm like, rock, paper, scissors, man.
	Rock, paper, scissors. Because competition, right?
	Everything's a competition. It's fine.
	Again, nothing wrong with that.
	Nothing wrong with the cooperation that women have.
	Nothing wrong with the competition that men have.
	These are all in a free society.
	These are all beautiful things. In a state of society, they all turn rancid because, you know, violence is toxicity, right?
	So on the left...
	If you can use lost toddler language, you break through the compartmentalization and you evoke the maternal sympathy, right?
	Which is why playing the victim works so well with women and is so exasperating for men, right?
	So exasperating for men.
	So, I think that this compartmentalization thing is really important to understand, and I think it's important to map in yourself.
	You may, like, if you're a lion, you have to compartmentalize the zebra, right?
	The zebra has to be like, okay, that's just food, man.
	Right? That's just food. Now, the zebra desperately wants to get away, but you can't empathize with that.
	So you have to other and compartmentalize the zebra or the cow in order to gain access to those calories.
	I agree with everything you're saying, but I have noticed women are more susceptible to self-deception.
	Well, that's because you are not as vulnerable to the self-deception that women have because you're a man.
	So it's easier to see, like if you're not prey to sentimentality, if you can't be manipulated by sentimentality, then everyone who's manipulated by sentimentality is going to be blindingly obvious to you.
	But whatever you're susceptible to in terms of manipulation will be blindingly obvious to everyone, right?
	So, men can be manipulated by making things into a challenge, by making things into a win-lose, by creating a pecking order and a hierarchy.
	Men can be manipulated into that kind of stuff pretty easily, right?
	I mean, men, they have, like, fantasy league football, for God, it's not even a real thing, but they still have to win, right?
	It's just a completely made-up thing.
	It's where gambling comes from, right?
	And so for women, or if you're a woman, was it cinema, the Christian cinema, the Democrat politician was recently apparently talking about how she can win over GOP congressmen with her cleavage, right?
	So what happens is...
	If you're gay or you're a woman who's not attracted to women sexually, you look at this cleavage and you're like, how on earth could anyone be manipulated by that?
	What idiots? Well, it's like, that's because you're not manipulated by that.
	But if Matthew McConaughey or Ryan Gosling comes in shirtless, well, the guys don't particularly care other than envy, but the women are all like, oh my God, are you photoshopped or what, right?
	So you've got to be careful when you're looking at where other people, particularly opposite genders, where they're susceptible to manipulation, and you're not because you're not them, to say, well, you know, women are just less wise, so to speak, you could think, right?
	Because they just get so easily manipulated by victimhood and so on.
	Yes, but then men get so easily manipulated.
	You know, here's the thing, right?
	I mean, when I was younger, right?
	I mean, you know this. If you hang around a bunch of guy friends and all that, right?
	You're just walking across a football field, right?
	Right? You're walking across a football field.
	You break into a run. You say, race you!
	What do all the men do? What do all the men do?
	Race you! What do all the men do?
	It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what they're doing.
	It doesn't matter what they're carrying. They will throw down their babies to race you.
	Right? Right? And of course, for women, this doesn't work that way.
	A woman's walking, race you!
	What are you talking about? Race you?
	Are we getting paid for something?
	Right? So, you understand that for men, like, race you!
	I gotta pull my muscles to win, right?
	That's crazy, right? So...
	For women, they look at race here, and it's like, what are these men insane, right?
	Whereas men look at, oh, this poor marginalized community they've got to have, right?
	It's just a ploy, right? If it doesn't work on men, it works on women.
	There's stuff that works on men that doesn't work on women.
	So just in order to retain humility, recognize that you are susceptible to being manipulated, I'm susceptible to being manipulated.
	You know, like, I'll be honest, right?
	If people are in my comments constantly saying, you're a coward because you never talk about X, it's like, Yeah, a little part of me gets goaded and all of that, right?
	So really, if you understand this compartmentalization, so how did it be evolved?
	Well, women were evolved to not compartmentalize toddlers, and then that can be used for people to pretend to be helpless like toddlers to gain access to women's in-group loyalty and preference, right?
	And this seems to be particularly true.
	Well, I think we all know where that goes, right?
	Now, but an over-compartmentalization means that you're only thinking about yourself and nobody gets through and blends in with yourself.
	There are no overlapping circles of self-interest between you and other people, right?
	So, if you understand that, I think you can understand a lot of the left and the right.
	So, the left... Has an out-group preference because the out-groups have figured out how to break through the compartmentalization, play victim, and gain resources.
	Understand what I'm saying here, right?
	And there's lots of exceptions.
	This is a generality, right?
	So the left... Is vulnerable to attack and exploitation through people breaking through the compartmentalization and presenting themselves as helpless toddlers in need of aid, which arouses maternal instincts.
	And then, if somebody interferes with the provision of resources, then it's basically like you're keeping a mother from bringing life-saving medicine to her dying child.
	Like, she would go crazy, and we want her to, right?
	Got to get the life-saving medicine to the dying child.
	But that is how things play on the left.
	Now, on the right, the compartmentalization is more specific.
	The compartmentalization is more specific.
	So if you look at, what is there?
	There's an America First meeting movement, right?
	America First, right? And this is sort of what Donald Trump was saying.
	And you see, you know, Biden is handing over another $33 million to Ukraine in the pretense that They're not at war.
	Didn't Congress have to declare war at some point?
	No, no, just send all this aid to the enemy and, I don't know, just completely bizarre to me.
	Oh, by the way, it's just kind of funny, everyone.
	Like, $44 billion to buy Twitter.
	Elon Musk could have solved world hunger.
	It's like, well, no, he couldn't have. Can't solve world hunger because you give people more food.
	They just have more babies, right? Can't solve world hunger in that way.
	It's a little more complicated than that.
	But, of course, all the people that Elon Musk has given the $44 million to, they can go solve world hunger if they want.
	Not to mention the Pentagon saying, well, wait a minute, we spent $3 trillion over 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.
	So, I don't think Elon Musk...
	I don't know why people get mad at Elon Musk spending his own money and not at the government spending your money or the money of your kids or whatever, right?
	So, what is the right?
	The right says that compartmentalization is earned through proximity, right?
	My country, my family, my neighborhood, there's some tribalism there, and the tribalism is there in particular to shield the community from the pillaging that occurs by pretending to be a victim and breaking through the often-feminine Compartmentalization barriers.
	They break through that, right? The dam bursts and all the needs of the world come in and all that, right?
	I write about this in my novel Just Poor, this paralysis of perspective, that you can't get anything done if you think of all the suffering in the world.
	You can't even work to try and end the suffering if all you're thinking about is the suffering in the world, right?
	So, for the people on the right, there's an in-group preference.
	The compartmentalization is my neighborhood, my group, my tribe, my people, my family, whatever it is.
	And then the out-group is not as strong.
	The out-group preference is willing to help and so on, but not willing to sacrifice the in-group for the out-group.
	Whereas for a lot of the people on the left, a lot of the women on the left and others...
	How do you break through that?
	How do you break through that in-group preference?
	Well, a couple of things you have to do.
	First of all, of course, you have to turn the women against the men because the men will counsel the women and say, look, if we have to give up all our food for all the hungry people in the world, our kids are going to starve to death and we won't survive, right?
	So you have to kind of all do love and respect for these wonderful instincts that you have, but they're kind of suicidal if you take them to extremes, right?
	Yeah. But if you turn the women against the men, which is one of the arguments, like this is why you turn against patriarchy, turn against men, and masculine male chauvinist pigs, as they were so called, or as we were called, when I was growing up and so on.
	You turn the women against the men so that the women won't take any advice from the men.
	You say, well, if you take advice from men, you're just a slave to the patriarchy, right?
	And you do that so that the men can't stand...
	In front of the, you know, gaping holes of the woman's heart wherein the outsiders rush in to gain and pillage all the resources, right?
	So you've got to separate the women from the men.
	And then if you can convince the women to not have children, or at least to delay motherhood, then all of the instincts, the out-group, preference, innocence, instincts for protecting the weak and the helpless, then are not attached to the woman's own children, but instead can be exploited by everyone.
	Who pretends to be a toddler in order to gain resources.
	In other words, gain power through pretend victimhood, right?
	And of course, if you look at the cultures where there's a lot of strength and success and spread, you will look at cultures and you will find cultures where, either nicely or not so nicely, women's instincts are heavily restrained by men, right?
	And, of course, men's instincts are heavily restrained by women, of course, as well, because men's over-aggressive instincts result in rejection from the women, the end of the genetic line, but it balances out.
	So, there's two things I was going to talk about tonight, but I wanted to make sure that this one made sense.
	It makes sense as sort of a way of looking at this compartmentalization.
	It's really important. And you've got to catch when you're doing it because it's a really, really important part.
	Look, there are people in the world who want me dead.
	There are people in the world who hate me.
	There are people in the world who think I'm like the worst guy ever.
	And how do I get through my day?
	Compartmentalization. You have to.
	You have to. Because if you can't, you know, to break down compartmentalization means you can't stand having enemies.
	And if you can't stand having enemies, you can't do any good.
	I mean, that quote from Churchill has always run through my brain.
	You have enemies. Good.
	That means you stood up for something, somewhere, somehow.
	I did a whole...
	Churchill is a character in one of my novels, and I worked pretty hard on my Churchill, and you can get it at almostnovel.com.
	Almostnovel.com.
	Men can't individually outcompete cunning propaganda en masse.
	No, no, of course not, right? The lawyer at Twitter was pretending to be a toddler by crying?
	I wouldn't agree with that analysis.
	I'm not saying that you're wrong.
	I'm just saying I wouldn't particularly agree with it.
	No, so... For women, if someone can convince the woman that that person is a toddler desperately in need of her help and protection, and if she can't give that help and protection, she experiences intense suffering.
	In the same way, if your child is...
	On an iceberg somewhere and you've got to get to your child and you can see your child but it's too cold to swim or there are polar bears in the water like the woman goes through extreme agony because there's someone who needs their help and protection but she can't provide it.
	And so the free speech question is, okay, well there are all these people who gain power by pretending to be violently injured by free speech.
	Right? They gain power.
	They silence others. They shut other people down because they can't win arguments.
	But what they can do is they can pretend to be violently aggressed against by free speech.
	Right? And therefore, they play the victim.
	Often the women will rush to want to protect these, quote, toddlers.
	And the toddlers, of course, are just playing them.
	They're playing them like a fisherman, right?
	Playing them like a fish, so...
	How can you measure how much compartmentalization is ideal, though?
	Can you change your compartmentalization capacity on others?
	Well, I think the first thing to do is to be aware of the psychological mechanism of compartmentalization.
	Of course, it's not like something I've invented myself.
	I think it's a fairly well-known thing in psychology, but I'm sort of bringing it to a more sort of personal and political and philosophical arena.
	So I do believe you can, absolutely, you absolutely can change your compartmentalization.
	The question is should you? Because compartmentalization is radioactive in a way.
	It's an intense, intense power in the world, right?
	Because you can use it for extraordinary good, but you can also use it for extraordinary ill.
	It can be a massive benefit to society.
	It can be an unbelievable catastrophe.
	For a society.
	It's like caring for others. It can be really good in society, but if you don't have a fuse mechanism or you don't have a skeptical mechanism, everything you care about can be used to destroy you.
	That's the fundamental principle of life, of history, of society.
	Everything you care about can be used to destroy you, which is why you've got to be kind of careful in the world.
	Saying what you care about and showing your heart and wearing your heart on your sleeve and telling everyone, you know, you meet some woman, you've been dating for a week and you tell her all of your worst fears and everything that makes you tick and everything that's horrifying to you and, boy, you better hope she's a good woman, man, because if she's not, she knows exactly how to take you apart piece by piece and then you're going to end up as a stake in her in a restaurant after being chainsawed by her sociopathy, right?
	So, Everything that you care about, right?
	I mean, what does I care about the most in my public life?
	What I care about the most is spreading philosophy.
	So when people wanted to hurt me, what did they do?
	They took away my ability to spread philosophy or at least severely compromised it or hampered it, so to speak, right?
	So, I mean, it was pretty...
	I mean, I couldn't exactly hide it.
	It's kind of what I was doing for 15 years.
	So I most care about...
	Spreading philosophy. And so that was right out there.
	So when the people wanted to hurt me the most, what did they do?
	Well, they interfered with my ability to spread philosophy.
	So, can I live with 100% compartmentalization?
	I don't know what 100% compartmentalization even means, because we all have areas in which we're not compartmentalized, even if that is just ourselves, right?
	And, you know, like the people who laugh at guys getting hit in the balls by a ball or cricket bat or something like that, okay, you know when it happens to you, it's godforsaken, right?
	So, I don't know what 100% compartmentalization looks like.
	I'm sure that even if it's just you who's not compartmentalized, like it's funny when it happens to somebody else, a comedy is when it happens to somebody else, a tragedy is when it happens to you, so you're not compartmentalized with regards to your own interests, and even complete psychopaths aren't compartmentalized with regards to their own interests.
	So... I don't know what 100%, and nobody's 100% compartmentalized.
	Everyone has some interest that they're willing to fight for, even if it's just their own selfish interest or whatever.
	So if you want to tell me more, I would be happy to explain, but I don't see how 100% compartmentalization would matter or is possible.
	What makes you optimistic about life when you wake up every morning?
	Depends what you mean by life.
	Am I optimistic about my own life?
	Yes, absolutely.
	I have a wonderful wife. I have a wonderful family life.
	I have great friends. I have a meaningful career.
	I'm very optimistic and happy about my own life.
	The world as a whole? God, no.
	God, no. Absolutely not.
	I compartmentalize, right?
	I've done as much as I humanly could for the world as a whole.
	I mean, holy shit. I mean, I couldn't have done anything more than I did.
	I'm not just talking about my life as a public intellectual.
	I mean, my God, I was fighting the good fight against collectivism and totalitarianism and communism and socialism and fascism and national socialism since I was in my mid-teens.
	You know, that's 40 years.
	And... I didn't really pull any punches.
	Perhaps unwisely so at times but I didn't really pull any punches.
	I find the Overton window ridiculously boring.
	Absolutely, completely, and totally boring.
	It's like if somebody said, you have to be a painter, but you can only use three colors, and you can't even mix them.
	Wouldn't that be like the worst and most boring thing?
	It's like, no, I want all the colors.
	Why on earth would I limit myself to three colors?
	For whatever reason, I don't have that fuse within my brain that says, oh my God, you just can't talk about these things.
	I mean, I've recognized that they're difficult and volatile topics because they're difficult and volatile topics for me as well.
	But I don't have what other people have, which is, well, I just won't.
	I just won't. In fact, where people tell me not to go is usually where the best stuff is and the stuff that's most essential to us.
	Like, whatever's the most unacceptable in society is almost for certain the most liberating.
	Because why on earth would it be rendered unacceptable or marked as unacceptable if it wasn't liberating, right?
	If it wasn't the most powerful thing, right?
	Wherever they tell you not to go is where their weakness is.
	So I think pretty obvious, right?
	And I just, I find this Overton window of what you can and can't talk about just ridiculously boring.
	It's, it's, it's really pathetic.
	And of course, just about everyone falls for it.
	And I get it now. I mean, I understand.
	I'm not some big blame thing or whatever, right?
	So, as far as the world goes, like, how things are going to go, oh, no, we're in a downward plunge, and who knows when the bounce is going to hit.
	So, as far as my life goes, fantastic.
	As far as the world as a whole goes, well, there'll be a place to land.
	Someone's going to figure out the gold scotch thing.
	Somebody's going to figure out where, like, how profitable and wonderful, smart people are to have around.
	They'll figure out a place for us to land.
	I never met a Christian vegan.
	Coincidence? Well, of course, but with Christians, they accept a theology wherein God put the animals there to serve man.
	All right, so let's see here.
	I'll 1v1 you and Doom for $100.
	That's interesting. Yeah, well, I don't think I'll take $100.
	That's very kind. I mean, if you want to donate, that's great.
	But, yeah, send me an email.
	Call it at freedomain.com.
	Send me an email and we'll give it a shot.
	I think that would be fun.
	Elon Musk's free speech stuff is kind of a silver lining.
	Well, except now there's the Office of Combating Disinformation, right?
	I mean, so they just react with more government power, right?
	Although that's not necessarily a bad thing.
	Ministry of Truth, MinTruth.
	Minimum Truth, yeah, for sure.
	So, it's kind of late in the game for free speech alone to be able to solve things, but...
	Could be. Could be.
	Could be taking a holiday. JustPoorNovel.com.
	Please, dear God. JustPoorNovel.com.
	My God, it's such a beautiful book.
	It's such an incredible book.
	There's such incredible characters.
	And boy, the themes are just so deep and meaty and juicy.
	JustPoorNovel on audiobook?
	Yeah, so there's two mp3 files.
	You can go to justPoorNovel.com.
	You can just download them. I'll set them up maybe this weekend as an XML, so you can get them as an XML feed, but...
	Almost was really good, by the way.
	Well, you're totally wrong.
	Almost isn't really good. Almost is fantastic.
	Almost is almost perfect.
	How does it feel to stick your tongue at Twitter?
	just curious not judging I don't know what you mean by stick my tongue at Twitter yeah almost is a really A really great book. It's really, you know, the biggest things in the world arise from some of the pettiest and smallest personal issues, which I genuinely believe.
	Alright, I won't do my next topic.
	Maybe I'll do one this Sunday.
	I have another topic, but I really wanted to get through the compartmentalizing stuff.
	Really thought-provoking stuff about compartmentalization.
	I sent you five dollars. Thank you.
	Appreciate that. Personally, I think it's worth more than five bucks.
	But hey, that's just me. It's just me.
	I think that if you have a way to look at the world that helps you understand yourself and the world, the left and the right and politics and men and women, pretty good.
	But anyway, look, I don't want to sound ungrateful.
	Thank you very much. I appreciate this.
	Very kind. Any other thoughts or questions?
	If you haven't joined freedomain.locals.com, Please do.
	It's a wonderful platform and a great place to chat.
	And also there's a bunch of donor-only shows which you can get access to.
	It's a couple of bucks a month and you get access to some really great stuff.
	This guy says, parents in my past have used the suffering of poor people in Africa and others to delegitimize my own difficulties in childhood.
	Claims people aren't perfect and just can't be held accountable when I try to question that.
	Oh, so your childhood wasn't as bad as the poor people in Africa?
	Therefore, you didn't have a bad childhood?
	Okay, well then say, well, your parenting is much worse than the most perfect parent in the world, and therefore you're a terrible parent.
	How do you like it, right? How do you like it when I come up with a standard and hold you accountable to it, right?
	So the best, most perfect parents in history, you were a long way from that.
	Therefore, you were terrible parents in the same way that apparently my childhood wasn't so terrible because people had it worse.
	When will you explain why you ended almost in this way?
	I really want to know.
	Sorry if there's a spoiler here or two.
	It's not really a big spoiler because you kind of see where the novel's heading.
	The novel ended in World War II. How do you have a happy ending at the beginning of World War II? It's not possible.
	The sins of the fathers are visited on the lives of the children.
	You can't have... World War II was the second greatest single disaster ever to disfigure the world.
	And the novel talks about everything that led up to the Second World War.
	The protagonist valiantly attempts to prevent the war and fails.
	How are you going to have a happy ending in the second greatest disaster, the first being the First World War, the second greatest disaster in the entire history of the world was failed to be prevented and you want a happy ending?
	No, it's there to show that there aren't happy endings in war so that we can avoid the next one.
	This is my first live stream.
	Excited to be here. Well, thank you very much.
	I appreciate that.
	I appreciate that.
	A comedy is when people escape what they deserve.
	A tragedy is when they get what they deserve.
	And the comedy is there to excuse immorality or foolishness with the hopes that you can get away with not getting the consequences.
	It's sort of like if one person is begging a loved one to stop smoking and the loved one won't stop smoking and then the loved one is dying of lung cancer and you say, well, why was it such a sad ending?
	It's like, because I don't want people to die of lung cancer so I'm showing what happens when you don't listen to Don't Smoke, right?
	So when Reginald doesn't listen to, because of his own pettiness and vanity, he doesn't listen to, let's not have a war, but instead out of rage against his brother and because he knows his brother's martial nature and knows that his brother will end up fighting in the war and frankly basically wants his brother dead.
	So when he drives the world into a war for vengeance against his brother...
	Well, we all know, if you've read the book, who pays for that decision the most?
	How many generations has your family been in North America?
	Well, zero. I wasn't born in North America.
	I was born in Ireland. How can I know when my conversations rise to the level of philosophy?
	When you... When you can apply the reasoning to every situation, then you're in the realm of philosophy.
	When you can apply the reasoning to every situation, when it's universalized, then you're in the realm of philosophy.
	Like, how do you know you're in the realm of physics when your explanation for how things work applies to everything across the world, across the universe, across all time?
	When you get to universality, which is another way of saying consistency, then you're in the realm of philosophy, and then whoever you're talking with, you should hold them Close to your heart with hoops of steel because they are your fellow angel in search of universality.
	All right, last question or to my friends.
	Thank you for dropping by tonight.
	It's an enormous, even wonderful pleasure to talk with you.
	And you guys pull philosophy out of me like Ahab with the white whale.
	Because the philosophy comes because you guys are listening.
	And you are an absolute part of the conversation.
	And I hugely appreciate you being here tonight.
	Great show. One of the best ones in recent memory.
	Is there any truth to psychic phenomenon?
	Yes and no. So psychic phenomenon is extrasensory perception.
	We have instincts.
	We have a second brain down in our gut.
	We have instincts. Very, very important.
	When you get a feel for someone.
	My daughter has unbelievable instincts.
	She's been validated every single time.
	She's so good at reading people and understanding people.
	Even if it's not fully conscious for her, she just gets these instincts for people.
	And I've tried contradicting her in the past and I haven't done it for some time because her instincts are always bang on.
	So you have a gut, you have a sense, you have all of the reptile, lizard brain instincts about good and evil, right and wrong, safety and danger and so on.
	That looks like psychic phenomenon.
	Remember the unconscious has been clocked at working 8,000 times faster than your conscious mind.
	The unconscious is God in some ways.
	The unconscious has been clocked at working 8,000 times faster than your conscious mind.
	In other words, it assimilates and processes information at a speed so rapid we literally cannot comprehend it in any way, shape, or form.
	Is that psychic phenomenon?
	No, because it's all explainable by inputs and data.
	The way someone looks at you, the posture of their body, whether they have eye contact, the firmness of their handshake, whether they have a little bit of sweat on their upper lip, the way that they shave their beard if they have one, everything tells you everything about everyone.
	Everyone knows everything about everyone within about five seconds.
	of meeting them.
	And that's not a psychic phenomenon.
	That's simply the all senses, gut, brain, unconscious, everything working together to try and keep you safe and out of danger.
	And so that's very powerful.
	Can we read minds? No, not directly.
	Have we evolved to differentiate safety from danger or good from evil?
	Absolutely we have.
	Absolutely we have.
	And the rapidity of that processing can seem almost identical to psychic phenomena.
	But basically, the whole question of psychic phenomenon and its validity only exists for one reason and one reason only, which is that men don't like to call bullshit on pretty women, right?
	So pretty women talk about being psychic and men are just like, yeah, pretty sure, yeah, psychic, yeah, absolutely.
	Sure. I mean, of course, if there was a tribe that was able to do telekinesis or was able to transmit and receive thoughts through mind, do you know what incredible hunters they would be?
	Do you know what incredible military soldiers they would be?
	I mean, they would rule the whole planet.
	The genes for mind reading would take over in about 12 minutes, evolutionarily speaking.
	So... But no, just, you know, pretty women speak a bunch of nonsense and men just nod because tits, right?
	So that's the only reason this stuff basically exists.
	Most guys aren't going to tell a woman she's crazy for believing in astrology if she's very attractive.
	Oh yeah, I've been there.
	I mean, I dated a woman who...
	Oh, it's just... She was stunning.
	She was a stewardess. And she was like...
	She believed she had psychic powers.
	And I said, oh wow, you know, gosh...
	James Randi, the amazing Randi, a magician, he's got a million dollars sitting in a vault in Las Vegas.
	We just got to go down there.
	I'll split it with you. I mean, 50-50, man, half a million bucks would be pretty sweet.
	We go down there. You prove that you have psychic phenomenon, and we walk out there with half a million bucks each.
	My God, what a fantastic thing.
	Let's go. Like, I mean, let's go this weekend, for God's sakes.
	I mean, why wait? Somebody else could be on their way, right?
	And what did she say?
	It doesn't work that way.
	It's like, well, first three words are correct.
	Everything else after that is nonsense.
	Relationship didn't work out, thank God.
	All right. Yeah, if you tell her she'll call you crazy and find a guy who doesn't criticize her because she's hot.
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
	No, it's, you know, it's what Nietzsche said, right?
	Great power, great beauty, great wealth.
	Distort everything around them.
	It's very hard to get the truth from those.
	That's why it's tough to trust people who grow up with those kinds of privilege because they just didn't get a whole lot of truth.
	People broadcast their inner state with their body language.
	It's evolutionary split-second snap judgments.
	Yeah, I mean, there's a whole book about this from Malcolm Gladwell called Blink that's, I think, quite important.
	And, you know, whether it's all true, I don't know.
	It's Malcolm Gladwell, so he can be a little fast and loose.
	But the argument goes something like what they did was they took...
	professors and they just took them to like they couldn't even tell what the words were what the topic was and they played like 10 seconds of one professor lecturing and then played 10 seconds of a different lecturer a professor lecturing couldn't even hear the words could only hear the tone a little is all distorted and they asked who was the better professor and the 10 second garbled stuff was pretty much perfectly in line with the student evaluations from the professor And they also did the same thing with doctors.
	Doctors, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.
	Another doctor, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.
	And they said, you know, which doctor has gotten in more trouble with lawsuits?
	And people were able to identify very accurately, even with 10 seconds of garbled speech, which doctors had been more involved in lawsuits and been sued more often and so on, right?
	So... Yes.
	Yes. Difference between astrology and religion?
	Religion has rules and expectations and will make you uncomfortable and has demands and moral standards.
	Astrology is you're special because stars, you're special because month.
	And of course, if you need someone to tell you who you are, you aren't much of anything.
	If you feel that you have to go and read an astrology book or article to figure out who you are, then all you are is a conformist.
	And I was in a play once with a woman who worked at a psychic hotline and she's like, I just told them I didn't make everything happen.
	Of course, right? Of course, yeah, rules and religion evolved, tried and tested to some extent, yeah.
	So astrology is a way of making sure that men, smart men, don't sleep with dumb women, right?
	Because, you know, IQ is largely genetic, right?
	So if you've got a lot of smart men sleeping with a lot of dumb women, you're going to lose IQ. So astrology is one of the ways that smart men stay away from less intelligent women to make sure that they meet a woman who's like, oh, astrology, of course it's nonsense.
	Let's have a baby, because we're all above average here in IQ. So...
	I mean, that's how it works, right?
	That's how it worked with the woman I dated.
	She was, like, bullshitting me about psychic abilities, so I stopped dating her, right?
	So, you know, these things all have evolutionary purposes that can be very important and very helpful.
	And, yeah, it is a total red flag, for sure.
	For sure, like socialism, right?
	Socialism in a woman is saying, I'm going to get more money from the state than from a loving husband.
	So, I'm just going to follow that.
	Astrology came from men?
	Well, sure. But, I mean, men can come up with love tests as well, right?
	So, I'm Chad. I'm more attractive than the state.
	IQ is more highly inherited from mother than father.
	Yeah, that's right. That's right.
	That's right. Stop explaining my fiancé's sister.
	Yeah. Well, no, it's a kindness because people of different levels of IQ can't really get along that well in a marriage.
	Like, you can be friends and acquaintances or whatever, right?
	But you can't really get along that well.
	So if you have a way of very quickly finding out, like, the more skin a woman shows, the less smart she is in general, right?
	Because she's saying, I want to overwhelm you with hormones rather than dazzle you with intellect, right?
	So, again, no hate, no negativity.
	It's, you know, it's just a sorting mechanism and it's good.
	You know, people have different IQs, significantly different IQs.
	Marriage ain't going to work out that well for the most part.
	And so...
	And, you know, kids, half, one half, I don't know, it's a mess, right?
	So, you know, these things are all very helpful and very positive to make sure that, you know, birds, IQ birds of a feather flock together, so to speak, and there's nothing wrong with any of this.
	It's just kind of natural in a lot of ways.
	And if you look at this kind of stuff, you can go, you know, in the past you'd be able to go to a woman's Record collection and figure out all of this stuff.
	And I remember very distinctly going on a date in my early 20s.
	I think it's early 20s.
	And this woman had Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time.
	And I opened it and it cracked because she'd never opened it before.
	I'm like, well, that's good to know.
	All right. I'm out of time.
	Lots of love, everybody.
	Thank you so much for a wonderful night.
	fredomain.com forward slash donate.
	Please, please to help out.
	I would really, really appreciate it.
	We've got great communities going on here.
	fredomain.locals.com Yeah, she listens to Machine Gun Kelly.
	Are they drinking each other's blood?
	Yeah, well, not the fluids that I'd be exchanging with her, but what the hell.
	That's why I'm not a rapper.
	All right, thanks everyone. Lots of love.
	Take care. Have a wonderful evening.

▲