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May 12, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:07:50
DON'T LOVE DEATH!
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There we go. Alright, let me just post this a few places and then we will get it started.
How's everyone enjoying the...
How's everyone enjoying Bitcoin these days?
It's never boring.
It's never boring. In the hot crazy matrix, Bitcoin these days is amber heard.
That's all I'm saying. That's all I've got to say on the matter.
I don't even check. I don't check.
I'm not selling. I don't check.
It'll be fine. It'll be back.
I mean, where are people going to put their assets?
You've got 8.3% inflation.
You've got supply chain issues.
You've got the FDA shutting down the plants that produce food.
You've got a bunch of American kids.
Got no food. Baby formula down, right?
Crazy. Well, you know, I'm no longer interested in preventing people from experiencing the results of their choices.
I'm a, you know, humanity has outgrown toddlerhood and is now in the process of learning through experience.
I mean, that's the way it is, right? When you're...
Kids are very little. You make sure that they don't have to learn from experiences, because that's really bad, right?
You don't sort of say to your one-year-old, hey, as you're learning how to walk, good luck not going down the stairs, good luck not falling down the stairs, right?
You baby-proof your ass. Of course, of course you do, right?
You have to. But then when they get older, And this is a bit of a transition from mom brain to dad brain, right?
But as you get older, what do you do?
You say to your kids, hey, if you don't want to wear knee pads when you learn how to roll a plate, you don't have to.
Because you're not going to be there forever, right?
You're not going to be there holding their hand forever.
They're going to have to learn how to manage their own risks.
That's life. Learn how to manage your own risks.
And the population as a whole, it's like, well, media lied a whole bunch to you now, didn't they?
Media done lied to you a whole bunch about who the good guys were, who the bad guys were, who to vote for, who not to vote for, and you listened, didn't you?
And if you want to listen to bad advice and you're an adult, well, who's going to stop you?
I mean, I used to. It used to be my big temptation.
I used to want to stop people from...
All that bad stuff, right?
You want Congress to spend $40 billion sending unvetted arms to a war zone?
Welcome. Because apparently you don't declare war anymore.
It just doesn't happen. So, yeah, I just...
People are in the phase now, at least for me.
You've got to learn by experience now, my friends.
All you can do is learn by experience now.
That's all you get. So yeah, good evening.
Welcome to Wednesday Night Live.
It's not going to be a long show. I did a lot of work today.
Recorded a couple of chapters of my new book.
Told you I was working on a peaceful parenting book.
It's a bit of a different format than you might have been expecting, but I think the message comes across even more powerfully.
But I recorded a couple of more audiobook chapters.
I had a call.
You know, I still love doing these listener calls.
And if you want a listener call, you've got something you want to put through my chattering forehead, you can email me at callin, C-A-L-L-I-N, just callin at freedomain.com.
And I'd be happy to chat with you.
And this was a young lady who's like, yeah, my home life wasn't too bad when I was growing up, except my sister committed suicide and I had an eating disorder.
Other than that, though. So, yeah, I did that and I'm doing a show now, which is, again, great pleasure.
Love doing it. No complaints, but it may not be the longest show in human history.
So, yeah, good evening, Julie.
Good evening, Robo. Obi-Wan.
New Jersey, LinkedIn.
Hello, hello. Good evening.
So yeah, if you've got comments, questions, throw them at me, man.
I'm coming to the well.
A smidge dry.
A tiny smidge dry.
I was just saying in the intro before I started recording that in the hot crazy matrix, Bitcoin is now in the Amber Heard territory.
Hello, hello. Good evening, everyone.
Hi, Mitch. How you doing? So, yeah, questions.
At what age would you teach a child to drive a car?
Depends on the child, I suppose.
But to do it before I did, for sure.
I didn't learn to my 20s because I had no access to a car and no hope of access to a car.
And the only reason I learned was because I was working up north.
And I had to have it go.
I had to be able to drive to work up north.
The guy who was teaching me, he had a coffee test, so I learned on a stick shift.
Hit me with a why if you've ever driven...
I don't think they're as common now, these days.
But hit me with a why if you've driven a stick shift.
Like, straight up, clutch, gears.
Like, if you have driven a...
Stick shift. Yeah, you have?
Oh, good for you. Good for you.
Yeah, look at you.
You work in the polls like a girl named Amber who's a redhead with a bad father.
Oh, you still drive? Yeah, yeah.
Oh, you still have one? Wow.
All my cars have been manual.
Good for you. You want to hear...
I've told this story, but it's many years ago.
Hit me with a Y if you'd like to hear a funny story about me driving a Porsche with a stick shift.
Alright. So...
So I learned how to drive on a stick shift, but then I didn't drive a stick shift for a long time.
And then I was visiting some friends in California, and I didn't have a car, I didn't rent a car, and they were way out in the bush, so to speak, or the desert or wherever they were.
And I'm like, well, a couple hours from the airport, how am I going to get to my flight?
And they said, oh, yeah, no issue, man.
We've got this super performance Porsche that we've sold, and we need someone to drop it off at the dealership in L.A., So, you could just drive it there, and then you could just grab a cab from there to the airport.
It won't be far, but, you know, this...
Two birds with one stone, man. You get to drive a Porsche.
High performance. Like, this thing was used as a racing Porsche.
It was insane how sensitive everything was on this Porsche.
It was about as sensitive as a man who's been in prison for four years.
So, anyway...
I was kind of excited.
It was cool to drive. And it was like a convertible and, you know, wind and I had hair in the day.
All that. It was just fantastic.
And... So I got up.
I had to get up pretty early. And of course, I'm like, oh.
Ah, stick shift.
Now, I learned to drive stick shift on basically a Model T. Like, it was a car so old that...
I don't know. It was used as a battery ram in the Civil War or something like that.
But it was pretty easy to drive for a stick shift.
Now, this thing was like somebody with ADHD on cocaine.
It was like every time you touched it, it would just jolt and burp and, you know, you just needed an expert, right?
And I had to back this insane TwitchBeast thing.
Backwards, a curving driveway.
I was just, it was mad.
And everyone's like waving me off like, good luck.
And I'm like, no. Now reverse and stick shift isn't too bad.
So I got to the top of the hill and I was just like, no, no, no.
It's just because it was so sensitive.
It was insane. Anyway, finally get it on the highway, open it up.
The drive to LA was fantastic.
Like it was a beautiful day.
And, uh, The car was magnificent and, you know, obviously I had a little bit of contact vanity being in a car that I couldn't possibly afford at the time.
And it was okay.
It was okay. Then the problem is, you see, I get to L.A. and it's rush hour.
Now, rush hour, anywhere, LA I guess in particular, a huge amount of stop and start.
Now, this thing again, it was like...
And there were people in LA, LA, right?
It's one place. There's lots of people in their open air.
They got their convertibles.
They got their windows rolled down.
And so they can all hear me basically beating this glorious velociraptor of a machine to death with a stick shift through the forehead.
Just bang, bang, bang.
Because it was just making horrible sounds, and my only goal was to have it worth more than $8 by the time I got it to the dealership.
In other words, that I hadn't stuck all the cogs to the bottom of the hood or something like that, but just grinding the gears like something terrible, right?
And... So I get closer and then it goes from rush hour to endless traffic lights where you've got to turn left and I literally would get stuck in the T. I get stuck in the cross trying to turn.
And again, the people are like annoyed at me, which I can completely understand I would be too.
They're annoyed at me. For two reasons.
One, I'm gumming up traffic in LA, which is already traffic hell to begin with.
And number two, I'm clearly an incompetent...
I don't know if they just thought... I don't know if it was some new software zillionaire who just bought a car who had no idea how to drive it or whatever, but oh man, it was brutal.
And... It got so bad that I just...
At the end of it, I just couldn't get it into...
I couldn't get it... I got with very close.
I could see. I could see this dealership I was supposed to drop this car off at.
And... I just parked the car, put the pocket brake on, and I said, listen, man, I can't do it.
I can't. It's too horrible, and I don't want to wreck the car.
It's fine, I'm sure.
And I got two guys from the dealership, and we just pushed this Porsche into the dealership.
And that was my last time ever driving a high-performance vehicle.
But yeah, they're twitchy as hell.
I mean, this thing was souped up.
The engine had been upgraded.
I don't know, there was a nitro button or something like that.
But oh man, it was horrifying.
You know, as a British person, I really don't like to inconvenience other people, except through the realm of philosophy, where apparently it's my total addiction.
But... Yeah, stick shift on the open road is glorious.
Oh yeah, fantastic. It's just that, you know, like you always get a bit of a sinking feeling in your heart whenever you see traffic up ahead.
But if you're driving a ridiculously cocaine-enhanced twitch of a car in stick shift, it's a whole lot worse.
I literally was like tempted to just drive on the shoulder.
I was just going to drive on the shoulder because I wouldn't have to slow down, and then when I got pulled over, I'd say to the cop, okay, you tried!
You tried driving this thing!
It's insane! I mean, it's so insane, it's going to shit on my bed.
So, yeah, it's pretty wild.
Steph, here in Portugal, auto is practically a myth.
All stick, baby! And again, I don't want to sound overly defensive, but...
I would have been fine, I think, with a regular stick shift.
But this thing, again, high performance.
It had like 400 gears.
It was completely insane.
Like, my bike, when I grew up as a kid, I mean, I generally would assemble bikes from things I found in the garbage or whatever, you know, the inevitable bike of seven colors and all with no brakes.
But I had like one gear.
I had no gears. Like, just one gear, right?
And then, you know, there are these ridiculous bikes that have like 20 gears and stuff like that.
And... Yeah, those I've never quite gotten used to.
In fact, I consider it an insult to my manhood to have to switch gears.
I really do. It's like I will grind my way up a hill just so I don't switch gears because switching gears is just cheating.
It's like taking performance-enhancing drugs.
It's absolutely wrong to switch gears on a bike.
It's wrong.
It's just cheating. It's just cheating.
All right. Parallel parking for the first time with a stick on a hill was one of the scariest things I've ever done.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
It could have been worse for me.
It could have been San Francisco rather than L.A., because then I would have just been underwater.
Like, I would have just backed myself into the bay.
No question. You often see inexperienced drivers crash supercars on social media.
No, so here's the thing, right?
So for me, it's like I had no temptation to go fast or to overcook it.
In fact, I was going as slow as humanly possible without getting actually assassinated.
And so I was really...
Oh, man, that was brutal, though.
Just, you know, everyone's yelling at you, the horns, and you just can't make the car go.
So, I mean, I'm the only guy...
Who took one of the fastest Porsches on the planet and got people to push it because I couldn't drive it.
I mean, I made it 99.9% of the way, but that last bit, I was just like, man, I give up.
I give up. I can't.
Please, God, just push this thing with me.
It's completely mad.
It's like getting a vertical takeoff and landing jet and then just getting some crane claw machine to lift it up and put it down.
It's just mad.
But, you know, it's important to know your limitations.
And I'm not scared of...
Oh, but you know, when you had to, at least for me, when you had to stop driving stick was when, back in the days when cell phones first came out and you had to answer your phone and all that, so you couldn't do all of that at the same time.
I sold a lot until I got the hang of it.
Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, it's, again, a regular one, but this, again, I don't want to sort of, like, make it all an excuse and all that, but, yeah, I never did find out if the car was drivable after I drove it.
I'm sure it was, because I'm sure I would have heard about that, but oh, man.
It sounds like you're stepping on the back of some prehistoric animal, jumping up and down until the back cracks.
It's like taking a bunch of carrots and just grinding them.
It's wild.
The high-performance stick shift is just mad.
And they do this on cars, right?
The Formula One cars.
And so they have these really narrow little stick shifts and all of that, right?
Yeah, it's wild. All right.
Driving education should be more important because it will save lives.
So, the driving thing...
God, I hate bad drivers.
I really do. Because it's one thing if you want to screw up your own life, but you're going to get other people caught up in your shit.
But... I remember reading some study many years ago about how, you know, one end of the city, other end of the city, there were two guys who did this race.
One was allowed to, one had to follow all the traffic rules, the other one just basically did whatever and ran through the reds and yellows or whatever it was, right?
And just we wove in it.
And they got from one end of the city to the other at about the same time.
And a friend of mine used to make fun of, you know, the guys who are just like dodging around.
It's like, oh, good for you, man.
It's an hour drive, but don't worry, you'll get home one car faster.
It's like, that's kind of a good point.
So I do remember, you know, some of the early lessons of just like...
Don't ever be in so much of a hurry that you cut corners in a car.
Because if you have a crash, minimum it's a couple of hours, even if nobody gets hurt and all of that.
Minimum it's going to be a couple of hours at the scene.
It's going to be days and days of paperwork.
So if you're going to cut corners in a car, zoom around people and shave the edges of what's allowable, then maybe you'll get to your destination a couple of minutes faster.
But if you get into an accident, you might not get there at all.
And then where would your hurry be?
So yeah, just don't ever be in a huge hurry in a car.
Like just whatever's happening, people would rather you show up late than not at all, right?
So just don't be in a big hurry and always drive like everyone around you is drunk and checking their texts.
That's been my defensive driving from day one.
It's just like I simply have this fundamental assumption And I said this to my daughter, you know, when you're crossing the street, right?
Assume that somebody's nose deep in a text.
Yes, it's illegal, but just assume it.
You know, like you have this thing where you're about to pull out of your driveway or something, right?
And there's a car coming down the road from your left, right?
This is in the same way that you use cars, right?
So the guy's coming down on your left and he's got a signal on, right?
No, forget about your driveway because they're not going to be turning into your driveway.
It's a stop sign, and some guy's coming, and he's got a signal on.
He doesn't have a stop. You have a stop, so you're at the stop.
He doesn't have a stop. So you can go, because he's turning, right?
I never, ever, ever assume that he's actually turning.
Never! Like, not once in my entire life have I ever assumed that just because someone has their signal on, they're actually going to make the turn.
Never, never once assumed, and I never will assume that, ever.
I have to, and I don't just wait till they're slowing down.
I wait till they're actually starting the turn.
Okay, if they have the signal on, and they've slowed down, and they're actually starting the turn, 95% probability that they're going to do that turn.
But I just assume that everyone has left their signal on from whatever turn they did before.
They just left their signal on and they come in straight through the intersection.
That's my absolute assumption.
And, you know, it's probably cost me a grand total of a couple of hours over the course of my life to wait for people to actually turn.
But my assumption is that the drivers are drunk, texting, they suddenly went blind from moonshine, and they're having an epileptic attack.
That is my absolute assumption everywhere I drive at all times.
Now, you know where this comes from?
This comes from I spent my teens, my 20s, I got my first car in my 30s.
I was like 32 or something like that when I got my first car through business, right?
I had to have a car, pick up clients and drive them around.
So, for, you know, 20 years, I was a bicyclist.
I would bike everywhere.
I used to bike from my home an hour and a quarter to get to work because it was good exercise and I was sitting all day at my job and, you know, saved me money on bus fare or a bus coupon or whatever, right?
The monthly pass. Now, when you are on a bike, you simply assume everyone is trying to kill you.
Like, that's just the only way you could survive as a bicyclist.
I used to bike all around downtown, which is complete suicide.
And I was biking back when they used to have these subway grates.
And the subway grates, sorry, not the subway, the sewage grates.
grates.
They used to have sewage grates on the side of the road and they built these sewage grates before the 10 speeds came in.
So when bicycle wheels were fairly thick and then when they built these sewage grates, they built parallel to the sidewalk, these very thin grates.
Now when the 10 speeds came along, they had thin wheels and the thin wheels used to get stuck in the sewage grates and then they had to build them diagonal so that people wouldn't end up flipping over the front of their bikes because they're, you know, super model thin 10 speed wheels got stuck in these grates.
Yes.
So when you are a bicyclist, you simply assume every single car ahead of you, someone's about to open their door.
Like if you're driving on the right side of the road and there's cars parked on the right side of the road, someone's going to open that door.
Guaranteed. And so you're always like, there's someone in the car, and you get ready to veer, and you just know.
And then, of course, you veer from, you know, staying away from that to, oh, my God, I got my front wheel caught in some streetcar tracks.
It's all over Toronto, the streetcar tracks, right?
So if you're going to make it as a bicyclist, and, you know, it's good health and saved me thousands and thousands of dollars by not having to spend money on buses and subways, great stuff, great exercise.
But... Your longevity odds go down considerably when you're a bicyclist.
So I got real jumpy about that kind of stuff.
In bicyclists, you assume everyone's about to drive into you, that they're doing that Albert Brooks at the beginning of Defending Your Life, reaching around for CDs and about to cream themselves, except they're going to cream you.
And I remember one time...
You know, somebody just opened the door without checking that a bicyclist was coming.
And that's another thing you always check when you've been a bicyclist for a long time.
You check everywhere where there are bicyclists and so on.
And he was just mad. He was mad at me.
Because I crashed into his...
I couldn't... I couldn't... There was a streetcar, so I couldn't go around.
And he just opened his door. And it's just like, okay, well, this is the price of me not paying for a bus fare, right?
And he was mad. I remember another time I did get caught in a train track...
In a streetcar track, flipped out of my bike...
Was in a parking spot and it was of course a BMW. You know, the old joke about BMWs.
What's the difference between a BMW and a porcupine?
Well, with a porcupine, the pricks are on the outside.
The BMW, like I'm picking myself up, I've got strawberry elbows, all this kind of stuff, right?
And kind of dazed, didn't wear a helmet at all back in those days.
And literally the BMW is, he's honking his horn because he wants, like, take your mangled carcass and get out of my parking space, plebe!
Yeah, that was pretty rough.
The same thing I distinctly remember pouring, like literally mad pouring rain standing on a street corner and it was a walk sign and the BMW was just edging its way through the crowd.
It's like, dude... You're dry.
Fuck off. You're dry.
Let the people who are currently going through a car wash equivalent of a rainfall walk to where they're going to go.
And he's just edging his way through.
And it's like, oh, God.
BMW, please stop being so cliched.
Because, you know what?
I gave up fighting cliches a long time ago.
Let's see here. What do we got?
Dirt bikes. Yes.
Dirt bikes, a great deal of fun.
You know, I always hesitate to share these stories because I grew up, you know, I did grow up very poor, but I had some fairly well-off friends, or at least when I came to Canada, better off than I was.
And my friends used to invite me to their cottage, and up at their cottage were a bunch of dirt bikes.
And that's when I learned to go...
Through the woods on a dirt bike and also learned how to drive a snowmobile.
And we used to have these games where in the winter, right, you'd be on the snowmobile and then everybody would be throwing snowballs at you.
And if they hit you on the head, then you had to give whoever hit you on the head with a snowball, you had to give them...
The snowmobile. And it was a great deal of fun.
And I remember revving it once so hard that I just completely snapped the ski off.
And I felt really bad. But, you know, nobody got too mad at me.
Because, you know, these things happen, right?
These things happen.
But yeah, I remember also, God, taking a dirt bike out.
Deep, deep into the woods and just could not get it started, could not get it started and ended up having to push it all the way back.
Again, like insanely hot, ridiculous amounts of bugs, like to the point where you had to sometimes breathe like through your fingertips because you'd be inhaling bugs, black flies and mosquitoes and so on.
I finally got it back and my friend was like, Where's the battery?
And I jumped so hard that the battery had fallen out, and that's why I couldn't start it.
And then I had to walk all the way back to get the battery, and then walk all the way back with the battery.
But, you know, these are the trials and the first world problems of me, let me tell you.
Oh yeah, don't forget, the book is out.
And the best way to get it, it's only out for donors at the moment.
And the book is called The Future.
And You really got to read it, but you can listen to it at the moment.
I'm recording the audiobook. You can get it at afreedomain.locals.com.
Just sign up for a couple of bucks a month and you can get the book and you'll love the book.
If you like what I have to say, you'll love this book.
It's kind of a cliche, but literally 40 years in the making, this book.
40 years in the making.
All right. Please give me a question or a comment, or I can just ramble on about more stuff.
I actually have a soundboard now in honor of the late Kevin Samuels.
I got a soundboard. So, I don't know.
Will you hear this? Let's see.
Can you hear the crickets? Did you know that the same singer who sang on squeezes Tempted by the Fruit of Another, the same guy sang Mike and the Mechanics' The Living Years?
Same guy. What a golden voice, man.
I always thought that was Mike of Mike and the Mechanics.
What is he, the guitarist for...
Genesis. And I always thought, like, why on earth would you let Phil Collins sing if you've got this glorious voice?
This guy, right?
This keyboardist. And, yeah, it turns out even Phil Collins thought the guy had an amazing voice.
He said, with an incredible voice, this man could sing the phone book.
Or sing the phone book! Or however Phil Collins sounds, but...
Somebody said, I just finished part five of Steph's new book.
Love it. It's a bit like waiting for a new book in a series or having a new show to come out waiting for new chapters.
Yeah, this is an old thing from Dickens.
They used to publish in serials, right?
So I wrote this with serial in mind, which is why I've got the cliffhangers and all of that kind of stuff.
Yeah. Oh, hang on.
Oh, I think that's the issue.
Okay, let me know if you can hear this.
Yeah, there we go.
Do I just give you crickets until...
until that's it?
We stop giving you crickets? Or do we say, oh, look, Steph said something funny.
Is it too loud? Sorry. Ah, Steph, I feel anger at a family member that chose to join the military.
Is this wrong of me? So, I mean, I wrote this, gosh, like 15 years ago.
So, of course, I remember being at a party and there was a Canadian soldier there.
This is back in my blue pill days decades ago.
And I did, you know, this brave, brave thing to be in the army.
I can't imagine. Thank you for your service.
And he literally gave me this look like, yeah, okay, I understand what you say, right?
And so there's a lot of people who get a huge amount of propaganda to join the army, join the military, right?
And, of course, if they're from a poor background, the military will help train them.
The military might give them college money.
There's lots of benefits. And, of course, after 20 years in many places in the military, you can get a lifelong pension and all of that.
So there's a lot of propaganda.
How much do we hold people responsible for the propaganda they imbue or imbibe or accept?
How responsible are people?
For being propagandized. Well, propaganda works because people are susceptible to it.
So I would say that you have the right to be angry at somebody who joins the military if you have really clearly sat down with them for quite a long period of time and explained to them all of the things about the military that I would have some questions about, to put it mildly.
If you haven't had that conversation with them, I don't know that you've earned the right to be too mad at somebody who acts in error when you haven't acted to give them a more rational truth.
Let's see here.
Four 20-year-old Korean female backpackers in Australia die on the open road.
Well, but I mean, most people travel without dying, right?
So, I mean, what is everyone supposed to stay home?
I think that's going to happen.
Do you think there's inherent risk with Bitcoin or crypto with regards to power or internet issues versus good old silver or gold?
Okay, so this is a general philosophical principle.
It really comes out of economics, but it's a general philosophical principle.
So I read this book, I don't know, 20 years ago or whatever.
I think it was called The Undercover Economist or something like that.
And in it...
The economist was saying that he was watching a presentation and some guy was saying like, well, you've got to be crazy to invest in real estate because you get better returns with stocks and bonds.
And you're going on this whole thing about you get better returns in stocks and bonds.
And again, this was a long time ago.
And whatever the economic situation was at the time, that was the truth, right?
And the economist was really angry about it.
And he said, you know, one of the things that is the mark of a midwit is to compare the strengths of one thing against the weaknesses of another and think that you've done anything.
Every decision you're going to make in life has its strengths and it has its weaknesses.
It has its benefits and it has its costs.
So, if the way that you make decisions is you compare the strengths of one thing Against the weaknesses of another, you are lying to yourself by pretending that you're making a decision.
You compare the strengths of one decision against the weaknesses of another, you're just lying to yourself and you're giving yourself permission to do whatever you want.
Because if you compare the strengths of one decision against the weaknesses of another decision and use no other variables, Then you're just justifying whatever the hell you want to do by pretending you're going through some kind of rational analysis.
So the economist said with regards to real estate, a house, right?
Versus stocks.
Why would you buy a house when you could just invest in stocks?
It's like, because you need a place to live!
You need a place to live!
And the house isn't going to vanish.
The price might go down, but it's not going to vanish.
Some companies go right out of business.
Money's all gone, right? Theranos, right?
So on. So, yes, it's true that there were better returns in stocks and bonds at that time.
But then you've got to rent a place to live because you don't have any money for a down payment because you've invested it all in stocks and bonds.
So comparing the strengths of Of bonds, which was a nominal higher return, with the weaknesses of real estate, which was a lower nominal return, without taking into the fact that you need a place to live and you're just going to spend money on a rental place rather than buying a house, it's sort of pointless.
It's kind of boring. And this is what you need to do.
Compare the strengths of one thing against the weaknesses of another.
Any people who do that...
I'm not saying you're doing that.
I'm just saying that this is a... I wanted to give you the general philosophical principles here.
General philosophical principles are compare all the strengths and weaknesses against all the strengths and weaknesses.
And you'll find, in life, in general, there's no perfect answer.
Now, if you compare the strengths of one thing versus the weaknesses of another, you may believe or give yourself the delusion that there's a perfect answer.
But all there are In non-moral decisions, right?
In non-moral decisions, all there are is trade-offs.
That's all you're going to get. All you're going to get is a trade-off.
Now, you may prefer one trade-off, you may prefer one other trade-off, and so on, right?
But comparing the strengths of one decision versus the weaknesses of another is not making any decision at all.
You're just programming yourself. You're propagandizing yourself.
And we can see this all over the place in the world.
You can see this all over the place in the world, right?
Compare the strengths against the weaknesses and think that you've made a decision, right?
So when you look at gold and you look at Bitcoin, let's say, the gold versus Bitcoin question, Are there strengths in gold?
Yes. Yes, there are.
Absolutely there are strengths in gold.
It's a longer track record.
It's going to survive an EMP attack.
If there's no internet, you still have gold.
I mean, I get that it's physical.
It's, you know, it's structured.
It's limited in its supply, although Bitcoin is even more limited in its supply.
But yes, there are absolute strengths to gold.
It's a physical thing. You've got it.
You've got it. Right?
So if you're going to say that the only important thing about value is, is it physical?
Then gold wins against Bitcoin.
But you haven't made any decisions, really, because you've simply compared the strength of physicality against the weakness of the non-physicality of Bitcoin.
So what? I mean, it's just weird, right?
Let's say that you really want to learn piano and you don't care about physical fitness.
And you say, well, you know, the time that I spend at the gym, I could spend learning piano.
The weakness of the gym is I don't get to learn piano.
The strength of learning piano is I get to learn piano.
So clearly, learning piano is the right decision because I've compared the weakness of going to the gym with the strength of learning piano.
So I'm going to sit down and learn piano and think, no, you haven't made a decision.
You simply compared what's not there at the gym, which is learning piano, with what is there and sitting down practicing, which is learning piano.
On the other hand, if you say, I really want to build up my physical strength and get cut and ripped.
Now, playing piano isn't going to do that for me, but going to the gym will.
So, I'm going to compare the weakness of playing piano, not getting fit, and I'm going to compare it to the strength, literally, of the gym, which is getting fit, and thinking, no!
You go to the gym, you're not practicing piano, so you'll get better at lifting weights, and you'll get worse at tickling the keys.
Right? If you want to learn piano, you sit down and practice piano, you're getting better piano.
But you're not getting physically stronger because it's piano.
So this is the thing that you really have to make good decisions in life.
First recognize that, again, outside moral areas, violations of the non-aggression principle and so on, what are the good decisions?
It's hard to know when you actually take the strengths and weaknesses.
So you could say that, like, if you wanted to buy Bitcoin rather than gold, you'd say, well, the important thing is portability.
That's the only thing that matters when it comes to stored value, portability.
Is Bitcoin more transferable and portable than gold?
Yes, it is. So then you can say, well, it's not whether it's a physical thing or not.
It's not its materiality that matters.
It's only the portability.
And then you're comparing the strengths of Bitcoin, right, portability, against the weakness of gold, which is as much less portable.
You know, try sending a million dollars worth of gold to Indonesia.
It's going to be kind of tricky now, isn't it?
Try crossing a border with whatever, right?
Comparing a strength with a weakness is not making any kind of decision.
It's really the essence of propaganda.
Propaganda tries to convince you that there is a clear, good decision, and the way that it does is it compares the strengths of one position against the weakness of another and say, well, it's obvious. Who wouldn't, right?
Who wouldn't do that?
So, what's better, Bitcoin or gold?
I prefer Bitcoin because I have particular standards of value that I think are of value and productive and purposeful.
For other people, it may be better for them to have gold.
I don't know. I mean, I had the debate with Peter Schiff many years ago, Bitcoin versus gold.
So, please, when you see this in people, call it out.
And, you know, this audience is way smarter than your average bear, so I'm going to give you guys full cred with all of this.
When you see people, like, you can see this in the vax debate, right?
The vaccine debate.
If it's safe and effective, and it's free, and it prevents serious illness and hospitalization and death, of course you should take it.
It's a no-brainer.
Because they're comparing the strengths of a position, well, with nothing.
With nothing. It's safe and effective, it's free, and it will keep you healthy.
Right? Now, on the other side, You hear people, and I'm mad at these people, I've said this before, I've heard people online who said some time ago, you know, everyone who takes the vaccine is going to be dead.
In three years.
Two years, I think I heard originally now, it's probably been stretched out, right?
Right, so I want to hear...
Strengths against strengths.
Weaknesses against weaknesses. I'm not interested in strength versus weaknesses.
How good a fighter is some guy if he punches some old granny who can't fight back?
I don't know. It's not very impressive.
In fact, it's kind of gross, right?
It's immoral, obviously, right?
Even if the granny's in there, right?
You know, you play tennis, mixed doubles, right?
You play mixed doubles. And every dude knows this, right?
If you're hitting the ball to the guy, you can really put your back into it.
You can put your spin into it.
You can really let it rip. When you're hitting to the lady, she's got 40% less upper body strength.
She's usually got less of an arm width because, you know, we men got these orangutan arms.
So you're just going to hit it a little bit more gently.
It's just the way it is. It's just the way it is.
So when people give the strengths of one argument versus all the weaknesses of another, it's just like some guy hitting a granny saying, I'm Mike Tyson.
It's like, well, I much prefer people who steal man.
They're arguments, right? Because straw man is the weakest possible imaginary argument.
A steel man is the best conceivable argument that you can make against your own position.
I do that regularly.
I mean, that's how you strengthen your muscles with resistance.
You get a sharp blade through sparks and heat, right?
You've got to put yourself through the fire, right?
I'll give you guys a story that I think...
It exhibits this. It's a Chinese fable from pre...
Let me just make sure.
It's from pre-communist China.
It's a Chinese fable. All right.
Are you ready for story time?
Now, the real great story is called The Future.
Freedomain.locals.com.
Please, please do check it out.
All right. An old farmer who lived near the border of the country had only one horse but it ran away one day.
All his neighbors came to console him.
They knew how much he relied on this horse for the heavy works on the farm and he'd be in trouble without the horse.
But the old man replied, well, we can never tell if this isn't for the better.
One month later, the horse returned to the farm.
Along with it was another mare who had followed the horse all the way home.
All his neighbors came to congratulate him.
With the new horse, the old man would be able to get a lot more work done.
But the old man replied, well, we can never tell if this isn't for the worse.
The old farmer had a son who loved horse riding and had decided to take the new horse for a ride in the fields.
In the middle of one of his rides, he lost his balance and fell off the horse.
He broke his leg and couldn't walk for a long time.
This is obviously a tragedy, and the neighbors came to console the old man again.
But still, the old man replied in the same manner, Well, we can never tell if this won't turn out for the better.
A few months later, war broke out near the border, where the old farmer was staying.
The government issued a decree for the conscription of all young men in the region.
All young adults, all young men were drafted into the army except for the son of the old farmer because of his broken leg.
And so the old farmer and his son stayed alive and were saved from the ravages of war.
This is monkey's poor stuff, right?
Or I think it was the Chinese, when asked relatively recently about what some Chinese diplomat said, was asked, what do you think of the French Revolution?
He says, too soon to tell.
Too soon to tell. Come on.
Hit me with a why if you've ever had something you thought was a disaster that turned out to be a good thing.
Hit me with a why if you've ever experienced something you thought was a disaster that turned out to be a good thing.
Hit me with a why if you've ever experienced something you thought was a disaster that turned out to be a good thing.
Yeah, come on, we've all done it.
I mean, all the girls I asked out before I got married, either I broke up with them, they said no, or they broke up with me.
At the time, if a woman said no, I wanted to ask her out, I'd feel bad.
If I broke up with a woman, I'd feel bad.
If she broke up with me, I'd feel even worse.
All of these things were just so bad.
Now, of course, if I had the choice, I would absolutely have them all happen again because they led me to my wife.
I've been now married for almost 20 years.
Fantastic. Fantastic.
Couldn't be more pleased.
Couldn't be better. My childhood was a disaster that produced in me the will and desire and methodology to become a great parent.
Uncomfortable, undeniable facts, right?
How long a gap was it between me getting deplatformed and the Supreme Court?
Just as it's being deplatformed, having to be moved to safe locations and so on, right?
It's hard to know.
I try to not prejudge the good or the bad in things.
I try not to prejudge.
When I was first attacked, God, many years ago now, 14, 15 years ago, when I was first attacked as a cult leader for saying that family relations could be voluntary and that was a fine thing, it was okay, I thought that was a bad thing.
It turned out it It had me really commit to the show.
It had me get the experts on to justify and give the best opinion and so on.
And so, it's tough to know.
It's tough to know. De-platforming has given me the opportunity to return to what I truly love the most about philosophy, which is not politics or current events, but metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, and theology.
And I got to write a beautiful new book because I had time.
Because, you know, when I was... At the height of my reach and success in terms of numbers, I was working a lot.
I had to read a couple of books a week to do my interviews.
I was doing these crazy lengthy four-hour presentations on Plato.
I was doing all these debates, which took a lot of preparation.
I really am now getting to focus on the love that brought me into philosophy, which is the real depth and core of reality, knowledge, and ethics.
I still get to have these amazing conversations with listeners about how philosophy could really help them in their own lives.
It's hard to know.
Wait and see.
Thank you.
And you might have to wait for a long time.
But wait and see. Wait and see.
I think that's really important.
It's really important in life.
Otherwise, you really are at the mercy of magical thinking.
Being at the mercy of magical thinking is when you are absolutely certain whether something is good or bad, right or wrong.
And the answer is, with some exceptions, you don't.
You don't know whether it's good or bad, right or wrong.
With some exceptions. I'm not saying everything.
I'm not a pure relativist that way.
But in life as a whole, I mean, think of all the people that play the lottery.
They win the lottery. And they're ecstatic.
They're overjoyed. They think it's the greatest thing ever.
And then their lives get fed into the wood chipper like an extra in Fargo.
Just everything goes bad.
I was reading about one guy in Toronto, won the lottery, ended up as a cocaine addict, ended up getting arrested, thrown in jail.
And he says, jail is the best place for me.
When I was free. Like, we all want to be without limits.
Without limits. This is a superhero movie fantasy.
We're without limits. I've got the force.
I can move things in my brain.
I've got superpowers. I can run really fast.
I can fly. I'm immune to bullets.
Without limits. We want to be without limits.
We want to be so beautiful that people will just buy me things.
I want to be so rich that everyone will defer to me and I'll have anything that I want and everything that I want.
I want to sleep with everyone and I want to have a six-pack and I want We all just fantasize about being without limitations.
Yet when limitations get removed from people's lives, they go insane.
They go mad because we don't have reality which then contains us.
We evolved. In situations of extraordinary scarcity.
Now, I'm not saying we should live our lives in those situations of extraordinary scarcity, but recognize that removing scarcity from your life, which is all of our dream and our fantasy, removing scarcity from your life will drive you mad.
You will lose your sense of reality.
It's a devil's bargain.
The devil says, I will remove limitations from you, but in return, you lose your soul.
We are evolved to struggle, to solve problems, to be challenged, to get knocked down, to get back up again.
And we desperately wish for a cessation to that struggle.
And should the devil, in his infinite malice, decide to give us what we yearn for and to give us a cessation to that struggle?
We lose what is most human about us, which is the struggle.
We lose our minds.
We lose our friends.
We lose our love.
We lose ourselves. We are defined, to a large degree, by that which we oppose.
If we don't have anything to oppose, we don't have an identity.
We are flaccid muscles on an eternal couch with no resistance, no strength, no skeleton.
We got nothing.
So I think it's really important, you know, what are celebrities but the belief that we can be without limitation.
What I saw, I saw something Bono Vox, Latin for good voice.
Well, he's got a good voice, alright. The Edge and Bono from U2 were out in Ukraine.
They did a 40-minute concert for Ukraine.
And they replaced...
Lean On Me or some song with Help Ukraine.
And somebody posted, oh, I did a 40-minute concert.
Bono, The Edge, in Ukraine.
Somebody wrote underneath it, haven't they suffered enough?
He's a little cheesy.
Bono can be... I mean, he's so...
He is such a perfect platonic amalgam of everything sentimental, syrupy, saccharine, and trashy in hyper-pathological altruism mindset.
Just horrendous.
It's horrendous. What does he push debt relief?
But only for black nations, because apparently he's not racist.
But yeah, wherever there's a...
Cheesy pianist who wants to go to a war zone and play John Lennon's Imagine.
There next to him will be Bono, mutilating the lyrics to some innocent song in order to prove what a virtuous guy he is.
It's inevitable, it's boring, it's pointless.
It was all cliched. And...
Celebrities and superheroes give us the fantasy that, God, we're going to be happy if we don't have limits.
God, we're just going to be so happy.
Take away this limit, that limit, this worry, that concern, that issue, that problem.
It's going to be so fantastic.
And yearning for a life without problems, yearning for a life without limits, is praying for death.
It is Thanatos.
It is a death impulse. It is yearning.
As the poet said about a character, half in love with easeful death.
half in love with easeful death.
To yearn for the opposite of life is to yearn for death.
And life is challenge and struggle and problems and challenges and joy and satisfaction and achievement and all of that, right?
But the struggle is it.
There's a famous tennis player.
She said, the thrill of victory lasts about 15 minutes.
The thrill of victory, which you've literally worked 15 years to attain, the thrill of victory lasts about 15 minutes.
And you know this for yourself. You get some fantastic news.
Great news. And you're happy.
Your mood is elevated for how long?
For how long? 15 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, a day, maybe?
And then you just return to baseline.
You return to baseline. Now that's true for sadness as well, for anxiety.
You return to baseline. Settle the baseline.
It's like that old ring.
The ring of wisdom.
Ring of wisdom from antiquity.
And the ring of wisdom makes a sad man happy and a happy man sad.
It's not a magic ring, but it has that power to return equilibrium to moods.
And the only magic in the ring is the inscription on the inside, which says, this too shall pass.
This too shall pass.
The final thing, of course. That passes is life itself.
Because we're often in our mind, and I say this for myself as well, this is not some big Zen crap that I've completely mastered like I'm some cross-legged Gandhi hovering above Smudge Mountain.
But we say, I'll be content when, I'll be happy when.
Ah, when I get this problem solved, then I'll be fine.
I get this done, okay, I'll be okay now.
I'll be happy now. I'll finish these taxes when I... Okay, after I work out, I'll feel better.
We're just chasing, chasing, chasing.
And chasing ain't living.
Waiting for the problems to end so that you can enjoy life is basically saying I'll only be happy when worms are eating my eyeballs and I'm in the grave.
And your problems are over, you got no more stress, no more worries, no more challenges, no more limits, no nothing.
Life is challenge, opposition, aging, limitation.
That's what makes it noble.
That's what makes it... There's no courage without fear.
There's no success without the risk of failure.
Yeah, somebody says, ooh, I got a raise!
And you're happy that day, and maybe you're happy for a day or two afterwards, and then it just becomes the new norm.
It's called the hedonic treadmill, right, in...
I have a 4-pack. Oh, now I need a 6-pack.
Now I need an 8-pack.
What was it? Milo said once, the only thing more annoying than me is me with a 6-pack, so I'm going keto, or something like that.
But if you stop fighting life and just say, look, it's a cartoon I read as a kid, and there's two guys walking down the street, and on the other side of the street was one mutant Creature running after another mutant creature with bat wings and horns, right? The caption of the cartoon was, one goddamn thing after another.
And we do say that about us, one goddamn thing after another.
Well, that's life, man.
Until we get to a free society or whatever, a peaceful parenting.
It is one goddamn thing after another.
And if that annoys you, then life annoys you.
If problems annoy you, life annoys you.
And my very first video was this question.
Take the issues that you have right now, the problems that you have right now.
Fast forward to your deathbed.
You know, your deathbed.
You got bedsores.
You're hooked up. With more wires than an anemone.
And the doctor comes in.
You're waiting for the results of some test.
Doctor comes in and he's just like, Sorry man.
There's nothing more we can do.
I'm really sorry. I mean, we've had a good run.
You made it to a ripe old age.
We can't beat time.
And you know. You've got an hour.
You've got a day. You've got a week.
But there's no way out of the bed.
You're welded there. There's no way up.
There's no way out. There's no way back.
There's no recovery. You're just tipping over, right?
Like shells on a plank.
Just tipping over. You're going to slide into the hole.
Into the grave. Right? Now you think of that moment.
The doctor comes in and smiles sadly and shakes his head.
And the nurse closes your chart.
And they say, look, the name of the game now is making you comfortable.
Can't make you better. We can make you comfortable.
Okay, how much would you give to come back to today with the problems that you have?
When your big problem is you're going to fucking die.
That's your problem. You're going to die.
It's going to happen. It's going to happen to you.
It's going to happen to me. It's going to happen to everyone you know.
What would you give to have the problems you have now when you're facing the final problem that the big shock of eternity is opening up to swallow you whole?
hole, the Magadalon of death, ain't even going to chew.
Are your problems today so bad?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I pulled a muscle doing my exercise the other day.
Are you dying? No!
Then love it. Enjoy it!
At least you got to exercise.
I did actually. I pulled my calf muscle exercising the other day.
I went a little overboard.
I did like nine hours of exercise in one week.
A little overboard, you know, for 55.
A little overboard But I'll be damned If I gain the weight back That I lost you And that stomach bug Because it's kind of nice To be a little lighter Deathbed sounds sweet Nothing to worry about. Does it?
Does the deathbed sound sweet to you?
Then you better find a way to love your life a whole lot more because it's an incredibly precious gift.
You know, you're walking on...
The sand. What is sand?
Sand is just a bunch of seashells all ground up.
You're walking on the sand, which is the broken homes of tiny creatures that ate and fucked and slept and ate and fucked and slept with nothing.
Tossed around by the surf, pecked up by seagulls.
Got their ass eaten out of a hole.
You're walking on all these broken homes of idiot nothing creatures.
And if there were ghosts, and if crustaceans could be ghosts, you'd be walking on a near infinity of tiny little stupid souls looking up at you and saying, God, I wish I were that guy.
God Almighty!
I mean, that is a God.
He's 10,000 times bigger than me.
He can walk on his own.
He can jump over a wave.
I just got my ass handed world over world over world by the goddamn waves.
This guy can punch a seagull.
Sentences I totally knew I'd be talking.
This guy can punch a seagull.
all I could do was hide in a shell while a seagull broke my home and slurped up my ass.
All the broken bones of all the tiny creatures, all the ghosts of those tiny creatures looking up at you You are a god to these tiny creatures.
And the tiny creatures would look at you and they would say, this guy is stressed?
Are you kidding me?
This guy could go and write a poem.
This guy could write a book.
This guy could paint a picture.
This guy could invent a new dance.
This guy could learn how to play piano.
What the hell did I have?
Crawling with my soft crustacean ass from home to home, fighting with other things about some dead piece of shell from some other damn thing.
Next time I walk on the sand, I'll be like, haha, take that, losers.
Yes, thank you for getting to the deep moral of my story, my allegory.
I could understand a crustacean saying Yeah, might as well be dead.
All I do is try to reproduce, look for a home, and dodge the beaks of seagulls, which are basically T-Rexes to me.
Would you want to live your whole life just trying to have sex while the T-Rex was pounding around?
Unless that's your special kind of kink, in which case please seek some professional help, maybe a handful of lithium.
That's a rough gig, man.
It's a rough gig. You want to be a zebra?
Given birth without anesthetic?
Predators all around?
What are the odds of a zebra foal making it to adulthood?
One in ten? Great!
Ninety percent of my children get eaten alive.
Yeah, I can see.
I can see. Existential crises hitting crustaceans and zebras quite a bit.
But us? Us?
The glowing biped gods of the natural universe?
Oh, it's so hard.
Oh, it's so tough.
So many problems.
It's called being alive.
It's called being alive.
He who wishes for an end to problems is wishing for death.
Which is an insult to all the ghosts of the hermit crabs that worship every possibility we have that they never got a chance to experience.
And this is why I don't believe in an afterlife, because if there was an afterlife, we'd regularly see bloody chain writing on the walls saying, stop fucking worrying, you're not dead.
I would give anything to return to the state of my maximum worry when I was facing the black jaws of death opening up around my heart.
The dead would curse us as they doubtless cursed themselves for wasting life on the dream of everything that is the opposite of life called There Are No Problems.
It's really tragic.
It's really sad. Embrace it.
Embrace it. Love it.
You're going to live, you're going to die either way.
In fact, the more you love it, probably, the longer you're going to live.
The more you love life.
The longer you're going to live.
Because if you hate life, I think life will be like, yeah, okay.
We're not going to fight that cancer.
We're not going to unclog that artery.
We're not going to... Love it.
Love life, and it will love you back.
Hate it, and it will take its ball, cold your beating heart, and go home.
All right, any other last questions or comments?
I told you it wasn't going to be a long show, but a nice show for me anyway.
I hope it was nice for you. Was it good for you?
Lie back and smoke, like we're in the 60s.
Alright, let's hang on.
Do we have this? Do we have this?
This doesn't really sound much like crickets to me.
Yeah, life, the original Levitt reliever.
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
You know, it's like the Shark Tank or whatever show, right?
Well, you've got to convince the investors to invest in you.
That's your future. That's your future.
Somebody has started smoking.
It's good for you then. All right. Thanks, everyone.
Please don't forget, the new book is out.
I'm incredibly happy and proud of it.
It's really great. freedomain.locals.com If you want to help out the show, freedomain.com forward slash donate.
Please, please, please do.
I would hugely, hugely appreciate it.
Thank you so much for joining me tonight.
And lots of love from up here.
Don't forget my other books available for free.
JustPoorNovel.com AlmostNovel.com And FDRURL.com forward slash TGOA for the feed.
All right. Have a great night, everyone.
Lots of love from up here.
Thank you so much for keeping this all going.
I can't even tell you how much I appreciate it, which is, well, one hell of a lot.
All right. Take care, guys.
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