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June 11, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:09:36

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	Good evening! Everybody hope you doing well.
	It's me! There's Steph Bottinator.
	That's right. Start a show.
	Need to sneeze. That's just the way it goes in the high-tech professional world of online philosophy.
	So how are you guys doing? How's your evening?
	How's your life? How's your world?
	My world, yeah, post-COVID, much better.
	Donut sleep is over.
	But it's funny, you know, I feel a little down.
	I feel a little down.
	And it's probably a couple of things to do with that.
	I mean, you know, a week of bad sleep and all of that probably has something to do with it.
	But I've actually felt kind of down.
	Since I finished reading the audiobook of my new novel.
	And that sort of hollowed me out, man.
	And I think, of course, a lot of it had to do with...
	My father's death two years ago in a bit and processing kind of like a bad dad in my book.
	I think that had something to do with it as well.
	Let's just make sure we've got the right microphone here.
	Yeah, I think we have.
	So yeah, it is a strange thing to go through.
	I mean, I wrote...
	I don't think it's much of a spoiler.
	I wrote a pretty bad dad in the book.
	And a whole series of bad dads, really, in the book.
	And I think following someone like that to their end destination is kind of rough on the emotions.
	And I think it's just taking me a little while to shake that, which hopefully means it's a deep and powerful book.
	That's the idea.
	That's the plan. That's the goal. The novel is called The Future.
	And I'll tell you one of the reasons I wrote it.
	I'll tell you straight up one of the reasons I wrote it.
	So, one of the reasons I wrote it was 1984 pisses me the hell off.
	It pisses me off, that book.
	I mean, it's a fantastic book.
	It's a glorious book. It's a beautifully, terrifyingly, awfully written book.
	But... You know, there's this meme that's out there that says, 1984 is supposed to be a work of fiction, not an instruction manual.
	So, an easy way to know when 1984 was written was you just reversed the last two numbers, right?
	So, it was finished in 1948.
	Shortly before he died, I think after his wife died in surgery, and the book is incredibly frustrating to me because What did it stop?
	What did it stop? I mean, the book was written 74 years ago, something like that, right?
	And what has it prevented from coming into being?
	I mean, you used to read it, right?
	So 1984, and before I started working on the future...
	I was listening to the audiobook of 1984 and rereading some of the major speeches and I feel very angry at that book because it's such a terrifyingly detailed exposition of the kind of world we absolutely don't want to live in and yet, what did it prevent? What did it prevent from coming into being?
	I mean, going that way anyway.
	So, you know, 74 years after a giant prevention manual called 1984, which was required reading.
	Of course, I held off reading 1984 until 1984.
	It just seemed about right.
	But it was required reading in high schools for decades.
	What did it prevent?
	It's like...
	Here's the terrible future, and there's no way to stop it from coming into being.
	Here's the terrible future, and there's no way to prevent it from...
	The novel is just a torture device, really.
	Here's where you're gonna end up.
	Can you stop it?
	Not with this book, you can't.
	So I really wanted to write an antidote to 1984.
	See, 1984 is a book of a terrifying future with no way to prevent it.
	My novel, The Future, is a beautiful future and how to get there.
	On the one hand, you have a terrifying future.
	You can't stop.
	Coming into being, 1984, or the future, a beautiful future and how to get there.
	So why did 1984 not prevent 1984?
	Because it doesn't talk about childhood.
	It doesn't talk about the cycle of abuse.
	It doesn't talk about the state as an effect of child abuse.
	It doesn't talk about people accepting punishment by the state because they're violently punished as children.
	Doesn't talk about how people absorb and infuse brute authority with infinite morality because it doesn't unpack how we first learn those lessons in the home and then we learn them in the school and by the time we become adults that's just who we are.
	Oh, you have power?
	And you're willing to exercise it to punish people?
	Oh, that must mean you're totally moral.
	Totally moral, you see.
	And we create a class of people who can handle power in our minds.
	Right? We create this class of people.
	Oh, they can handle power. I can't handle power, really.
	I mean, maybe I could. I don't think I could.
	You can't handle power.
	Man, anyone I know who's gotten power kind of screwed it up.
	But there's this group out there.
	This... Inhuman group of interstellar angels.
	You can give them all the power in the known universe and they will only ever use it for good.
	They will only ever use it to improve your lives and the lives of those around you with no thought or self-interest of their own in any way, shape, or form.
	My parents couldn't handle power.
	Your parents can't handle power.
	Teachers can't handle power.
	Now, the power is not having authority.
	The power is not being right.
	The power is not Being convincing.
	The power we can't handle is violent power!
	That's what we can't handle.
	We can't handle the power of violence.
	Violence, short-circuit sympathy in the moral sense.
	We can't handle power.
	The power of the fist.
	The power of force.
	The power of the gun.
	We can't handle it.
	Nobody can. So power corrupts.
	And then they... Diffuse power into this general, well, this person has authority or this person is quite wealthy.
	This person is beautiful.
	This person has great hair.
	And we think that's powered up.
	The power of wealth, I don't care.
	The power of beauty, I don't care.
	Love it, love it. I love that there are beautiful people in the world.
	It gives us something to aspire to.
	It gives us something to admire. It gives us something to chase.
	Wonderful. The fact that there are very talented people in the world.
	Wonderful. Talented people are the spit, shine, polish, and icing of an often drab planet.
	Beautiful. Let those fireworks flow across the skies of our mind.
	Very charismatic. Very convincing.
	Wonderful. I hope that philosophy roots great, positive, wonderful moral ideas in the seat of the Pegasus wings of your capacity to be convincing.
	Wonderful. But you lift the gun, you lift the fist, you punish, you control, you brutalize, you attack, you undermine.
	You have the power to humiliate trapped people.
	And it's the trapping that is the Violence we can't handle.
	If you're a teacher, you get paid, whether the students like you, whether the students even show up, whether you're any good or not.
	You get paid no matter what.
	Why? Because people are forced to pay you.
	So where on earth would we get this idea that people can handle coercive power and Be not only excellent thereby, but really the only avenue through which moral excellence can be achieved.
	Where would we get this idea?
	That compulsion plus power equals virtue.
	Well, from our parents.
	Most parents hit their children.
	Most parents intimidate their children.
	Most parents raise their voices at their children.
	And so we look up at our local gene gods and we say, well, you use aggression and you are moral.
	Aggression equals morality.
	Violence equals morality.
	Morality. And then, of course, we look at the world and we say, well, gee, without the state, it should just be anarchy.
	Without the state, everybody would just fall apart.
	In the same way that we believe that without aggression, control, coercion, as children, we would run riots.
	And so people believe that there's this entire class of people You can give coercive monopoly power over, and that's a lot of how parenting is practiced.
	It's coercive monopoly power.
	Monopoly because your children can't leave.
	Coercive because you're using aggression.
	Power because you're willing to inflict it.
	If we don't control these kids, if we don't bully these kids, if we don't hit these kids, if we don't yell at these kids, they'll run riot.
	They're monstrous. They must be tamed by the soft, liquid whips of power and control.
	Now, I'm including yelling in this because when you have monopoly control over a growing brain, a forming brain, when you have monopoly control over a forming brain, you don't get free speech with that child.
	You don't get free speech with that child.
	In the same way, you don't have to feed everyone in the world, but if you have children in your household, you've got to feed them.
	Why? Because you've got monopoly control over their food source.
	They can't leave, and they can't get their own food, so you have to feed them.
	Do you have to feed everyone in the world?
	No. But when you have monopoly control, you don't get property rights over your own food, When you have monopoly control, that's not how it works.
	And when you have monopoly control over a forming mind, you don't get free speech to call them selfish and a jerk and mean and vicious and clumsy and bullying.
	You don't get to call them assholes or whatever is in vogue these days to control children.
	You don't have the right of free speech when you have monopoly control over A mind in formation.
	In the same way you don't have exclusive property rights when you have monopoly control over a child's forming body.
	A child cannot generate his own food and a child cannot generate his own self-image and identity.
	He is reliant upon the words and the language of his parents, of her parents.
	And the more That we rely on coercion to raise our children.
	The more they Stockholm Syndrome bond with this abstract class of angels that can handle power and in fact are necessary to have power in order for the world to be remotely moral.
	I trust the science!
	People say, I trust the science.
	You trust the television.
	Trust the science.
	The whole point of science is you don't trust it at all.
	The whole point of me, don't trust me.
	Don't trust philosophy, you think for yourself.
	Trust the science. My God.
	As if there's an entire class of scientists...
	Whose income, careers, prestige, budgets, capacity to pay off their student loans, the fact that it all rests on conforming with the existing statist power structures of printed money.
	You want to get your budget approved?
	Well, you better...
	Go along with what this head scientist says or that head trend says and you better not examine anything outside the pale or against the narrative.
	Oh no, but you see, these scientists, you know, you put on a lab coat and it's incredible.
	You put on like a white lab coat.
	You put that white lab coat on.
	It's a miracle. You understand?
	You're no longer a human being.
	You're no longer a mammal.
	You didn't evolve. You don't seek self-interest.
	You are immune from social, economic, institutional career punishment.
	Immune! Completely immune!
	Alone among the animals that evolved in God's green earth, you are lashed to an abstract Vessel of integrity that sails through the stormy waters of mere human considerations absolutely unscathed by self-interest or fear.
	You put on that lab coat and you've just vaulted out of the entire evolutionary structure of humanity.
	Ah, it's incredible.
	Then you are not even a human being anymore.
	You're science, trademark.
	You're just science.
	And the fact that you might get fired for going against the narrative, why, that matters not at all to you, because by putting on the white lab coat, you also sprout white angel wings and are no longer susceptible to mere petty human considerations.
	You float and flap above the teeming horde of mere earthly considerations, and you vault up to the pure crystalline platonic abstractions of pure science.
	Pfft. A load of bullshit.
	I mean, it's the same thing as the new Soviet man, the communism.
	You understand class struggle and you become like boxer in Animal Farm.
	You just work and work and you don't care if it makes you any more money and you don't care if you become exhausted and you don't care about any of these things because you're just working for the common good and you are no longer an animal.
	You are no longer a mammal.
	You care nothing for.
	Self-interest or self-harm.
	You are no longer guided by pleasure or pain or any of these things.
	You have vaulted out of the mere mammalian evolution into the iron bicep Soviet poster of infinite class interest.
	Where do we possibly get these gods from?
	Where, where, where, where?
	Well, 1984 won't tell you.
	1984 won't tell you.
	My book will. And how to solve it.
	I understand the ridiculous audaciousness of putting my book up there with 1984, which is a true classic of the genre and one of the most brilliantly written books in terms of form and ideas in the history of literature.
	I understand all of that.
	freedommain.locals.com You can...
	Get the book. Sign up for a couple of bucks a month.
	You can get the book. You can get the audiobook.
	You can get Mobi format.
	You can get EPUB format.
	You can let me know what you think.
	But I wrote the book.
	In part because 1984 was really pissing me off.
	The Matrix. Brave New World.
	All annoying, dystopian stories.
	Where no one ever tells you how the hell we actually got there and how we can prevent it.
	It's an endless parade of gruesome surgeries.
	With no possibility of the avoidance of illness.
	Appalling, horrible stuff, in my humble opinion.
	All right. Well, that's enough for my wee intro bot.
	If you have comments or questions, I am more than happy to hear.
	Just raise your hand, and I will be happy to run whatever issues or considerations you have through the Big chatty forehead of rambunctious philosophy.
	Just, yeah, give me a hand raise and I can unmute you and then just make sure you unmute yourself.
	Let me just have a look in here while I'm waiting for this.
	See if we've got some questions.
	Hello? Hello, how are you doing?
	I'm doing just fine.
	How about you? Well, thank you.
	I don't know if you saw this new documentary that just came out a while ago.
	It's pretty famous. What is a Woman?
	Have you seen that? I've not seen it.
	I saw a couple of clips here and there, but I haven't seen it, no.
	I just wanted to know your opinion on it, but I guess you haven't seen it.
	Well, I mean, I've seen, without talking about the content of that documentary as a whole, this documentary So when I was a kid, not knowing what a female was versus a male would have been like a joke question, right? And one of the things that's really happened since the 1960s is the mainstreaming of what I would consider craziness.
	What I would consider craziness.
	So I don't want to speak about that movie in particular.
	I think there are a couple of examples here and there.
	But just people who are kind of disturbed have been moved to the center of social discourse.
	And that's a huge problem.
	Because people who have ideas that are not defensible.
	So this to me is crazy people have ideas that they can't defend.
	I mean, there are ideas that go against common sense, and that's fine.
	There are ideas that do go against common sense, I understand that, and that's totally...
	I mean, I have ideas that to a lot of people would seem outlandish, so I work really hard to defend them.
	Now, if you move really crazy ideas to the center of society, and you do this largely through academia and to some degree through the media, in particular the entertainment media...
	So if you move crazy people to the center of social discourse, and the crazy is not the unusualness of their ideas, but the fact that they cannot defend them, then what happens is, if you put together crazy plus reward plus prestige, and prestige is a subset of the reward, you put together crazy plus reward, then you've just killed rational discourse.
	You just killed rational discourse.
	And what happens is when crazy people hold the helm of society, then they react with extraordinary levels of aggression to anyone who questions their arguments or their ideas.
	And so I do find this a very...
	I mean, my own family, my own mother, right?
	I mean, she had ideas that were pretty crazy.
	And when you would question them, When you would debate her or try to debate her on them, extraordinary levels of aggression would result, right?
	So she believed that various forces in society were sending her messages, you know, because two buildings over there was some graffiti on the wall, and the graffiti was actually for her, and it was to send a message, right?
	And so, well, how do you know?
	And what about the graffiti that's three buildings over?
	Does that count? How do you know for sure?
	And what's your other evidence, right?
	So, again, I'm a big one for dream-catching lots of ideas.
	Some ideas that truly seem outlandish can turn out to be extraordinarily correct, right?
	I mean, the world being round being one of them, right?
	So, I have no problem with people who come up with really unusual, seemingly crazy ideas.
	Like, okay. And so, if you have...
	Ideas that seem kind of crazy, but you believe in them, then what you need to do, if you're going to have any respect for those ideas at all, is you need to work really hard to make sure that they're provable.
	So I have an idea for a stateless society.
	I have an idea for peaceful parenting.
	So what did I do?
	Did I just scream at anyone who disagreed with me?
	No. I did the research.
	I reasoned out the arguments for UPB, for Peaceful Parenting.
	I interviewed the experts. I gathered the data and presented it in a wide variety of formats.
	And I tried to be as responsible for my ideas and arguments as humanly possible, with full recognition that they were going to seem quite outlandish to a lot of people, right?
	But when you put people who have outlandish ideas that they cannot defend at the center of a discourse, then what happens is anybody who questions those ideas will be met not with reason and evidence and arguments, but will be met with aggression and storming out and attempts to deplatform, or more than attempts, success of deplatforming and so on.
	So having the requirement that...
	Ideas and arguments be rigorously proven, having that taken out of society as a whole and being replaced with hysterical levels of aggression for any questioning.
	I mean, that's the mark of crazy people.
	It's really the mark of crazy people, which is when you challenge them, they get very angry, very aggressive, very insulting, very belligerent.
	They won't have the conversation.
	They storm out or they...
	Threaten you. These are just people who shouldn't be in the realm of ideas, or at least not in their current form.
	They should not be in the realm of ideas.
	And so promoting people with very unstable ideas that they cannot prove to the center of social discourse results in this kind of tyranny of aggression that characterizes a lot of modern discourse.
	You know, just prove it, right?
	Just prove it. Nothing wrong with outlandish ideas.
	I think they're wonderful. But you've got to really work to prove them.
	And where you can't prove them, then you seek conformity.
	And then through that conformity, you attempt to weaponize rage against disagreements.
	And this is kind of where we are at the moment.
	So yeah, I mean, I hope that helps a little bit.
	But is it worth watching? Have you seen it?
	Yes, I've seen it.
	It's pretty horrifying, actually.
	You can see, like, the transgender surgeon who does, like, mastectomies at 14-year-old girls.
	They can even drive, but they can remove a body part forever.
	It's horrifying. It is something that, I mean, when I was a kid, I think everybody goes through this particular thought from time to time, where when you're a kid, and you say, well, okay, when am I going to be an adult?
	When am I counted as an adult?
	Because, you know, when you're a kid, you want to be older, you want to be an adult.
	So you say, well, when am I counted as an adult, right?
	And of course, it always struck me as amusingly, annoyingly, I think everyone has this thought.
	It's like, oh, So it's 21 if I want to drink in some places.
	It's 19 if I want to drink in other places.
	It's 18 if I want to vote.
	It's 16 if I want to drive.
	Oh, but it's 11 if I'm going to a theme park.
	I'm no longer a kid.
	I'm an adult at 11, right?
	So there is a lot of variation in the question of...
	What is an adult?
	And when are children allowed to make their own medical decisions?
	Now, this issue as a whole, I think, unfortunately, like so many of these things, just comes down to really bad economic incentives, right?
	I mean, when the state pays for things, then the barrier to look for cheaper alternatives is...
	Not really there, right?
	What's the cost-benefit analysis, right?
	So an example would be something like antidepressants, right?
	So again, it's all just my amateur opinion and don't take anything I say seriously, but one of the ways that I think about it is, okay, so antidepressants cost whatever, I don't know, X, Y, Z dollars, let's just say cost $500, right?
	Okay, so antidepressants cost $500 a month or every two months or whatever, okay.
	So if you got a personal bill for that, Then you would have something to measure other solutions against.
	You'd say, okay, well, so it's 500 bucks a month, let's say, for the antidepressants.
	What could get the job done cheaper?
	Right? Because that's what we all do, right?
	Oh, here's a solution.
	But it only becomes a solution when we are charged for it ourselves, right?
	So then you'd say, okay, so let's see, look at antidepressants.
	What about... What about...
	Exercise, making sure I'm eating well and getting good sleep, right?
	So maybe if I put in good exercise, I check my diet and maybe talk to a nutritionist and I make sure that I get good sleep, you know, stay off the tablets, burning your retina at three in the morning or whatever.
	Let's say I can find ways to reduce my stress.
	Let's make sure that I have positive, helpful, enthusiastic people in my life and so on.
	Because you have a benchmark.
	You say, okay, we're getting 500 bucks a month.
	That's what, $6,000 a year.
	So is there a way to maybe get the effects of not being as depressed?
	Is there a way to get it?
	In a cheaper fashion or a more sustainable fashion.
	Because, you know, I get on these antidepressants and, you know, maybe that's it for the rest of my life.
	So that's, you know, 10 years, what, $60,000?
	20 years, $120,000.
	If I had that money and invested it, it would be half a million dollars, right?
	We go through these calculations when you have a cost-benefit, right?
	But when the state pays...
	Then it's free versus whatever, right?
	So if you're not paying your 500 bucks a month, but instead the government's paying for it, then it's like, okay, well, I'll just take the antidepressants because everything else is going to cost me more than that, so to speak, right?
	Either in time or in indirect costs.
	So, yeah, it's one of the downsides of having the government pay for...
	Your healthcare, or whatever you would want to call that, is that the cost-benefit of other ways of dealing with the issue, the cost-benefit of other ways of dealing with the issue no longer exists, right?
	I mean, it's the same question when it came to the mRNA vaccines, right?
	I mean, mRNA vaccines, it's like, okay, well, they're paid for by the government, which means they're paid for by debt, which means it doesn't really show up.
	And so... What other alternative ways could there be to deal with COVID-19 infections, right?
	And I don't know.
	I'm not a doctor. But, you know, I've certainly read some stuff that there do seem to be other therapeutics that have some effect.
	Or alternatively, you could say, well, you know, this thing's going to sink down to a rather relatively mild endemic variant, as most other things do.
	Tend to in this genre, so we could just grit our teeth and, you know, wait it out and try other therapeutics and so on, right?
	But because it's all paid for by the government and it's all, quote, free, then you don't evaluate it relative to other options.
	And that's a huge, huge issue.
	So yeah, this stuff where people make a huge amount of money from a particular course of action means that society as a whole doesn't really evaluate other courses of actions, and I think that's an issue as a whole.
	All right. Well, thank you very much.
	I will make a note of that and I will try.
	I saw it, little bits of clips here and there, and I was like, you know, that just looks pretty horrifying epistemologically.
	So I've sort of been probably shying away from it a little bit.
	But I appreciate you bringing it up, and I think it's Matt Walsh, right?
	So I would say it's probably worth having...
	I do enjoy people who've got...
	I've certainly been interviewed and raked across the coals and your ideas are crazy and justify them in front of a big audience.
	That happened in my last Joe Rogan appearance some years ago now, of course.
	And it's like, yeah, that's fine.
	It happened when I was on Dave Rubin and other things too where...
	And people are like, justify yourself!
	Defend yourself! And it's like, yeah, that's...
	I mean, I'd kind of like to know it a bit ahead of time, but it's not the end of the world that that kind of stuff happens at all, because when ideas seem outlandish, being challenged on them is usually a very good thing.
	All right. Thank you very much.
	I appreciate that. If you would like to unmute yourself, if you have another comment or question, I'm happy to hear.
	Hi, Stefan. It's good to be talking to you on the show here.
	How are you doing? Well, thanks.
	How are you doing? I'm doing fine, thanks.
	I just had a question along the same lines and your thoughts on a subject.
	What do you think of effective altruism and what do you think of the people who say they're utilitarians and they just want to maximize all human happiness?
	What are your thoughts on that whole field?
	They want to maximize all human happiness?
	Yes, as like an opposition to It's about as terrifying a thought as I could possibly imagine, but I'm happy to hear more.
	Go ahead. Well, really, it's just a counterpoint to the old form of Ayn Randian rationalist.
	It's like the modern concept of You want to distance yourself from who you are, and you just want to maximize some total happiness of everybody in the world, and that way you're not giving any preference to your own desires and your own wants, and you're kind of maximizing total happiness.
	And there's a whole group of effective altruists who say they philosophically determine this is the best way to live your life morally.
	Okay, so that's just to be a bunch of words, and I don't mean that that's you just saying a bunch of words.
	I assume that, but is there any way that you could articulate what this approach means?
	Because saying, well, I just want to maximize human happiness is like, okay, but it's like saying, I just want to maximize human health.
	It's like the devil's kind of in the details of how this stuff actually gets achieved.
	No, I agree. Let me give an example.
	So let's say you have a grandmother and she's elderly and she has millions of dollars in her savings account and she is going to spend it all on making a massive mausoleum for herself after she dies.
	The effective altruist or the utilitarian would say it's totally fine to kill your grandma in that scenario before she can change her will to have the mausoleum, take all the money for yourself, And give it to a charity in Africa or something because that will bring about more net total happiness for the world, right? You're not supporting your grandmother over the preferences of the people in Africa, so the money will be better used over there in Africa.
	And so there's a whole general trend of doing charities that way, giving the money where it will be maximizing total human preference.
	What they really I mean, this is straight out of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, right?
	So they very much, they would be like, yes, it's fine to kill your grandmother.
	That's the idea.
	Yes, in a general trend.
	Effective altruism, I thought you would have heard about it before.
	It's very kind of closely aligned to Randian libertarianism and that it's the opposite trend, right?
	It's going from...
	What do you mean? It's very closely aligned and that it's the opposite?
	Exactly. What are you talking about?
	It's like health, but it's the exact opposite.
	It's like, then it's not really, right?
	The other end of the spectrum, I should say.
	The other end of the spectrum.
	We mean that it's pure ideologically.
	Pure ideologically.
	Okay.
	So is there a central authority, like is there a state that allows these things to occur, or is it just basically a free-for-all?
	You know, like, I want your grandmother's money, so I'll kill her.
	No, I'll kill her, because is it just a free-for-all, or do you have to go through a legal process for this in the theory?
	The idea is it's a free-for-all, actually, exactly.
	Everybody is free to do what would maximize some total human happiness, and that's the general idea.
	Right, okay. And are there any rights or freedoms that would be able to withstand this abstract calculation of human happiness?
	There's absolutely none.
	That's why I say it's pure ideologically.
	Some total human happiness across the world is the only value that you're trying to maximize.
	Okay, but over what time frame?
	That's a good question.
	Sorry, go ahead. That's a really good question, right?
	There's discussions about should it be right now or should it be throughout all of human history?
	So if you take all of human history into the future...
	Well, no, hang on. Hang on.
	I mean, there is no such thing as all of human history for us as individuals because we're going to be dead, right?
	So my question with regards to human happiness is, okay, so you have somebody who's really craving a cigarette, right?
	And you give them a cigarette, okay, you've maximized their happiness in the moment in that they no longer are going through nicotine withdrawal, right?
	Yeah, yeah. But, you know, you're contributing to them dying of lung cancer down the road, right?
	So, Mike, what's the time frame here?
	The time frame can be all of future human history, so that you don't even prefer yourself over the lives of people who have existed a thousand years from now.
	Okay, so that doesn't answer anything for me.
	So, let's take the example of the old woman who wants to construct a mausoleum for herself, right?
	And the example would be you kill her, you take all of her money, and you give it to poor people in Africa or wherever, right?
	Is that right? Yes, that would be the hypothetical.
	Okay, so how do we know that giving the money to poor people in Africa is going to add to human happiness in the long run?
	How do we know that? Well, that's a good question.
	It's not supposed to be part of the hypothetical.
	I guess the idea is that...
	Well, if you're justifying murder, I'm not saying you, but if the idea is justify murder, I'd like a few details.
	I mean, because if you say, well, let's say the woman has $10 million, you take it away from her, and you give it to poor people in Africa, okay, well, then what happens, as you know, is that The men will give it to the women in exchange for sex, right? Because that's generally what people do, right?
	When they get resources to still simp to women for sex.
	And so what will happen is the men will get resources and the women will get resources and the women will often buy somewhat frivolous stuff.
	And the men will exchange the money for sex.
	And what that means is that the women will get pregnant.
	There'll be an additional amount of resources for the welfare state, which means that the children grow up without fathers.
	The family structure is wrecked and destroyed, which means you end up with a significant amount of violence and criminality and addiction and so on, right?
	So I'm not entirely convinced at all that just taking a bunch of money and giving it to people is, you know, if that were the case, the happiest people in the world would be everyone who won the lottery, which we all know is not the case at all.
	I agree with your analysis there.
	I think the general idea is that the hypothetical assumes that you are increasing some total happiness, right?
	You have an AI that's telling you it's analyzed all the factors.
	We know. What, an AI? What does that mean?
	Oh, this is like the computer that can somehow replace the price system in the Venus Project stuff, right?
	Okay, okay. Well...
	So, it's the idea that reducing happiness, sorry, increasing happiness means reducing struggle, is that right?
	The opposite of reducing suffering is supposed to be the opposite.
	No, but I mean, suffering, I mean, when you exercise, you suffer, right?
	I mean, you hear those guys, it's like, you know, gay porn at the gym, right?
	I mean, when you're exercising, it's quite a lot of suffering.
	You know, when I was on the water polo team, I was on the swim team, I was on the cross-country team, I was on the tennis team.
	I mean, it was tiring and hard work.
	And so, to reduce someone's unhappiness, you would have to stop them from exercising, right?
	Because exercising can be, especially training, which is kind of boring, you know, but wouldn't you have to then eliminate people's capacity to exercise because it hurts?
	With a pure physique crafted for you by a biological computer or something, it just creates a perfect physique for you and then you can have it without having to struggle.
	Would you prefer that? Probably.
	Well, see, here's the question.
	I don't know. Right now I'm reading a biography of John F. Kennedy Jr., who was this Greek god of a doofus who crashed his plane because he flew at night two and a half hours after he was supposed to leave with a broken foot.
	It was just a completely idiotic set of decisions.
	And My daughter was saying, well, why is this guy interesting?
	He doesn't seem like a very smart or good guy.
	And it's like, well, he is interesting because, for me at least, I think, well, if I had been given those kinds of opportunities that he was given, right?
	If I was given those kinds of opportunities, imagine all the good I could have done, right?
	And the answer to that, of course, is I would have done no good whatsoever if I had been given all of those opportunities.
	The struggle I had...
	As a child, right?
	I mean, certainly there's no practical altruism that would say, well, let's put Steph, little Steph Basil, let's put him through this kind of childhood so that he can emerge with a very strong commitment to peaceful parenting, which he could then spread to millions and millions and millions of people around the world, right?
	There's no way that anybody would say, yeah, he should definitely suffer.
	For, you know, 15 years straight through violence and abuse and neglect and poverty and so on, because, you know, it'll be good in the long run, right?
	It'll be good for, you know, many more children will be made happier than he was made sad, because his childhood is just an individual suffering, but the millions of children who are going to end up far happier because of what he did, well, you know, we're up several million happy childhoods just by letting him suffer that much, right?
	But I don't think that people would say at the time, because it's not like everyone who goes through the kind of stuff that I went through as a kid ends up really into peaceful parenting and spreading peace and reason throughout the world and so on, right?
	So the fact that I suffered as a child turned...
	I was able to sort of transform that, I think, into an enormous positive.
	And if I had not suffered as a child...
	Or had not suffered as much, then I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now, which I think is doing an enormous amount of good in the world.
	So I'm not sure how that altruism would work.
	Would it be okay then for me to suffer as a child if it meant that I would do such good as an adult?
	I would say yes, if it was a net positive.
	And I don't mean that to discount your personal suffering.
	I just mean that in the You know, in that moral framework there.
	Yeah, the end justifies the means.
	If millions of children lead more peaceful childhoods because of what I do, then the violence of my childhood, it becomes certainly more than worth it from a calculation standpoint, right?
	But maybe not for you, right?
	Maybe not for you, but for the world as a whole.
	Right, right. No, I understand that.
	I understand that. And...
	How do you know that the suffering that I went through as a child, how do you know that that's going to be transformed in the future into something good?
	You don't, right? When I was a kid, of course, there was no the internet, which is kind of how I got my ideas out in the first place.
	So the technology wasn't there.
	My communication skills were not massively evident when I was very little.
	I kind of grew into them later in life.
	And, of course, there are many people who go through the kind of childhoods that I went through who become, you know, criminals or abusers or drug addicts or whatever, right?
	And so how would you know ahead of time that this suffering of me or other people like me as a child would be worth it?
	How would you know? I guess the idea is once you do know, you can make that decision.
	Maybe you should know before you make the decision, of course.
	But once you do know, you have to make that decision of what...
	No, no, but you wouldn't know until I was in my 30s, right?
	Oh, well, maybe you can be smart enough to figure out what's going to happen, right?
	Oh, so it's determinism, then.
	It's determinism. Okay, so if it's determinism...
	Then happiness is not the result of chosen moral actions, right?
	Reason equals virtue equals happiness.
	Happiness then is a biochemical state that however you get there is fine, right?
	Yes, potentially with wireheading, right?
	Potentially with being totally addicted to drugs or such.
	Yeah, that could be a potential way to get there.
	Right, so then all you're trying to do is increase the blind endorphins running through someone's system, right?
	Yep, yes, yes.
	So it's human management with a biochemical reward system.
	It's like training a doc, right?
	Yeah, yeah, it could be like that.
	I'm not packing up. Yes, yes.
	Now, the people who would enact this kind of system...
	They themselves would be motivated by the desire for a good outcome, for a good end.
	Is that right? Yeah, they would be motivated for maximization.
	Everybody's happy. Oh, this is great.
	Everybody's living a great life.
	There's no suffering. That would be the underpinnings.
	Okay, so they obviously would take pleasure in this and view this as a better state than some alternative, right?
	Yeah, everybody's happy, no suffering at all, maximum happiness.
	No, no, no, hang on. Sorry, forget.
	I understand the outcome. But let's say Bob is a big proponent of these ideas.
	So Bob wants his ideas to become more mainstream because it will make people happier, which is Bob's goal, and once Bob is able to achieve that goal of making people happier, Bob himself will be happier too, right?
	Yeah. Not necessarily.
	Bob doesn't have to necessarily be happier for him to want that.
	It could make his life worse on Ned, as long as it is a general improvement.
	But he must believe that even if it makes his life worse, he would gain some satisfaction from increasing the happiness of the world, right?
	No, actually. See, this is the crux.
	You've come to the crux. The answer is no.
	Bob is supposed to not prefer his own happiness over anybody else's.
	It seems inhuman, but a lot of people profess to believe this way.
	Sorry, no, I understand that.
	I understand that. But there are people who take great pleasure in the denial of their own happiness.
	They tend to be called masochists, right?
	Yes. Okay.
	So... Bob would have some positive motivation for even sacrificing his own immediate happiness, which would be his satisfaction at surveying the increased happiness in the world as a whole, right?
	Not necessarily.
	I want to say yes, because that's what I would feel, but it doesn't have to be that way.
	Well, then you have Bob acting in a way that's incomprehensible, right?
	In other words, he gains absolutely zero positive benefit from his actions.
	In fact, maybe he just accrues nothing but negatives.
	And I don't just mean negatives in the short term.
	Like, Bob has $5,000.
	Bob gives away his $5,000.
	Bob is now hungry, right?
	But at least Bob feels that he's done good.
	In giving away the $5,000 and he can contemplate in his mind the satisfaction of the people who can now buy things, right, because of his $5,000 and so on.
	So what you're saying is that even though Bob doesn't want to, like, Bob would only do this because he wants to increase human happiness, which means that if he believes he has increased human happiness, his own happiness will increase.
	I see because he's satisfying that want, yes.
	I guess maybe you're right.
	Maybe it does necessarily need to improve his unhappiness.
	Well, otherwise, he would be sacrificing his own happiness for the sake of a negative.
	Like, we can sacrifice our own happiness for the sake of a positive, even that positive may be very ideological or abstract, but sacrificing our own happiness for the sake of Of everything that is negative would be incomprehensible behavior.
	Unless you had a rule, I mean, that was that way and you followed that rule.
	It wouldn't be incomprehensible if you were...
	No, no, but if you have that rule, you will gain some satisfaction from following that rule.
	I have now done what is good for the world and therefore I will gain some satisfaction from following that rule.
	Does that make sense? That makes sense, but there's Kantian ethics, right?
	The idea is that if you do get some satisfaction for being moral, some pleasure, then you're not truly being moral because you're doing it for your satisfaction rather than strict adherence to a moral system.
	Right, but strict adherence to a moral system should bring you some satisfaction.
	Otherwise, why on earth would you do it at all?
	That's a good question. So, let me ask you this as well.
	Happiness is, to some degree, a subjective state, right?
	Yes, definitely.
	And it can change based upon new knowledge, right?
	As in changing your retroactive happiness?
	Like you were happy before and then you learned something and then it changes that?
	Or I mean, it can just... Well, you know, you open up a piece of mail and you think it's bad news and it turns out to be good news.
	So you feel upset and anger and then you feel happiness, right?
	So there is some level of subjectivity involved.
	I mean, if you think of two people playing pool, right?
	And they're playing for $1,000.
	Well... If one person wins, if a shot goes in, then the guy who wins, like the winning shot goes in, he's happy, and the guy who loses, he's unhappy, right?
	So it's the same game. One person's happy, one person's unhappy.
	And so there is, to some degree, some level of subjectivity, right?
	So if you're sitting in your car and you turn your car...
	And it doesn't start.
	And you're really angry and you're upset because you've got to get to work and your car doesn't start and so on, right?
	And then just as you turn around to go back into the house to deal with your car not starting, you know, a giant out-of-control semi-truck trailer goes careening past in front of your house.
	And if you'd been on the road, you could have been killed by that, right?
	So then you go from, oh, man, the fact that my car didn't start was really annoying and bad.
	But then I realized that the car not starting might have just saved my life and probably did, right?
	Or, you know, the old thing that...
	You miss a plane.
	You miss your flight. You miss your flight and you're really angry and upset and unhappy.
	And then the flight crashes and killing everyone on board.
	And then the same event, which is you missing your flight.
	You're really unhappy about it.
	And then it's like the greatest thing that ever happened in your life was to miss that flight.
	And you see what I mean, right?
	Yeah, the knowledge changes how you feel.
	You used to feel that that was a bad thing and that you thought it was a good thing, yeah.
	Yeah, for sure, for sure. And, you know, everybody has gone through these things in their life where they say, like, you know, I had this stomach bug that stripped me of 10 to 12 pounds of fat and then I got COVID. So the stomach bug was really bad, but then I was glad I had the stomach bug because less fat is, I think, better for COVID or whatever, right?
	So there are these subjective elements.
	These subjective elements can also change just upon your own changing priorities, right?
	And so the fact that happiness has a subjective element to it is important, and it changes over time.
	But the other thing, too, is that how would anybody who...
	Proposes this viewpoint.
	How would they deal with the very real possibility that people would lie about what makes them happy?
	Right? So if I were to say, oh, $1,000 would make me very happy, right?
	And I say that because I just want $1,000, right?
	And people might lie about what would make them happy.
	And that's a big problem as well, in that if you're going to say, well, we're going to maximize the increase in human happiness, well, the increase in human happiness is not some objective, measurable thing.
	People would just say, I'm really happy, or people would just lie about what would make them happy.
	And so the problem is you then would have people manipulating about...
	What would make them happy? Just to gain resources, to gain access to, you know, somebody would say, everybody would probably say, oh yeah, no, I'd like a five-bedroom house or a ten-bedroom house or something like that, right?
	Now, would that make them really happy?
	Hard to say. But if you're offering them something, they'll say it, right?
	So this is economics, right?
	People, if they're not constrained by having to acquire resources, they'll just wish for everything.
	They'll just wish for everything. Yes, I want $100 million, and I want a mansion in Bel Air, and I want my own private jet, and all of these things will make me super happy.
	And you can't provide everyone these things, right?
	And so then you go back to the question of, okay, well, human desires are infinite, resources are finite.
	How do things get allocated?
	Well, the free market says they get allocated according to trade and voluntarism and property rights and so on.
	Whereas this kind of thing would just be like, what, you try to give everyone a mansion in Bel Air?
	Seems kind of impossible. So yeah, people might just lie about what they genuinely believe they need in order to be happy.
	No, no, no, this would really make me happy.
	Having Kate Upton as my girlfriend would make me really happy, say, 10 million men.
	And what do you do, like slice her up like sushi?
	I don't know, right? So yeah, people just lie about stuff.
	Are you still on? Oh, yes.
	Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt.
	That would be a failure state, right?
	If you take people at face value and you just give them what they say they want, that would definitely be a failure state.
	That would not work. The idea would be to figure out what people truly want, what would actuality and actuality make them happier in the future, and then give them that regardless of what they're asking for.
	Right. Now, of course, if you could get...
	A significant number of people...
	Like, let's say you could get the majority of people to believe in this philosophy, right?
	Which I think you kind of need to do, right?
	You need to get a whole bunch of people to believe in this philosophy.
	So then I'm not sure...
	You certainly wouldn't need any central agency, right?
	Because if self-sacrifice...
	Makes people happy, right?
	Or there's some positive response to self-sacrifice, or people are motivated to do it for some reason, right?
	That you get joy out of making other people happy, right?
	Or you get some sort of positive experience.
	And again, I'm aware of the Kantian ethics that you can't gain any benefit, but that just comes into the realm of incomprehensibility.
	It just becomes completely ridiculous at that point to say that human beings will act with no incentives whatsoever.
	I mean, that just doesn't make any sense at all.
	We're animals and we evolve that way.
	And people have some reason for why they do what they do.
	And, you know, I've had thousands of conversations with people who can't figure out their lives at all, sometimes literally to save their lives.
	And usually within 20 minutes to half an hour, sometimes a little longer, we usually write down to the root of why they're doing what they're doing.
	And it makes sense and it's comprehensible.
	And, you know, through that, they can change things, right?
	So, if it is a very achievable state that people no longer need anything, they don't need any benefits, right?
	If it's... If it's an achievable state for a significant majority of humanity that they no longer need anything, then there's no one to deliver happiness to anymore, right? You say, oh, well, people should never do anything for happiness.
	Okay. But then people should never come to you and say, give me $10,000 and I'll be happy.
	Because then they're bad people, right?
	Because they're doing something for the sake of gaining an advantage or making themselves happy.
	In other words, if human beings should never be motivated by happiness, why the fuck would people suggest designing an entire system around human happiness?
	That'd be like me saying, human beings should never be motivated by cannibalism, and therefore we should design a system founded on cannibalism.
	So, if human beings should never be motivated by happiness, then saying, well, we need a system that's entirely designed around delivering happiness is completely self-contradictory.
	Because the people would only tell you what they want so you could deliver it to make them happy.
	The hungry people who would get the grandmother's mausoleum money, they'd have to tell you, oh, you should give that money to me because I would be happier with some more money.
	And then you'd say, well, no, you shouldn't ever be motivated by human happiness.
	You shouldn't ever seek advantage.
	Therefore, I can't give you that woman's money.
	Does that make sense? That makes sense.
	I think it's the same problem with libertarianism as in you want everybody to adopt that same philosophy, otherwise it doesn't work, right?
	The same thing here, yeah.
	Well, let's not get into the libertarianism thing.
	Libertarianism is at least theoretically universal and can be achieved.
	You can respect everyone's property rights at the same time and so on, right?
	And because libertarianism has a self-defense aspect, right?
	So if somebody comes and takes your property, you can just use force to defend yourself and your property, right?
	So you don't need everyone to believe in it, for sure.
	But I'll tell you what I think this is.
	And I lay this charge upon Immanuel Kant himself.
	This is just straight up Satanism.
	It's straight up Satanism.
	And Satanism is give up the good for the pleasurable.
	That's what Satanism is.
	It's hedonism. So give up virtue, give up integrity, give up property rights, give up your right to life.
	And you won't have any rights.
	You won't have any morality in your life.
	But I could pretty much see my way clear to getting you some free stuff.
	So go kill the granny.
	Okay, now you're a murderer.
	Now you're a vile and evil human being.
	But you get some money.
	So give up the good...
	In return for pleasure.
	Right, so I saw this creepy AF guy on a college campus.
	And he was from some share your nude pictures and videos site, right?
	And the guy was like, oh you should join this site, you'll make a fortune!
	And one of the girls said, I'm pretty sure my dad would not approve.
	And he said, oh, your dad would approve when he's sitting with a Ferrari in the driveway you bought him.
	I'd give up your privacy.
	Let people see the pocket whirlpool of your own butthole.
	But it's okay, because you'll get a car to give up the good in return for pleasure.
	You have an affair, right?
	You give up the good, your marriage vows, the trust of your spouse, your husband, your wife, in return for transitory sexual pleasure.
	With parenting, give up the love of your children, the respect and devotion they would have for you, but it's okay because, you see, in return you get the momentary pleasure of domination, of control, of domination.
	And that's just straight-up Satanism.
	Give up your soul, and you'll get some cool shit.
	Give up your soul, give up the good, give up that which makes you angelic, give up the godhood within you, and in return, yeah, I can give you some fame, I can give you some talent, I can give you some notoriety, I can give you some money, maybe some looks, and you've given up the good in return for The pleasurable.
	But we're not very good at handling just the pleasurable.
	Being in pursuit of the pleasurable just, again, returns you to that puppy dog phase or stage of our evolution where the dopamine gets rewarded.
	You get rewarded by the dopamine for doing something that's advantageous to your evolution and And you return to the animal, right?
	That's in my new book, the angels versus the mammals, right?
	The angels versus the mammals.
	Literally, believe it or not, sometimes.
	So, give up the good for the sake of pleasure.
	Now, whether it's you giving up your good, your vows to your wife for the sake of pleasure...
	Having sex with someone else.
	Or whether you get all kinds of highfalutin and abstract and say, Ah, but it's not my pleasure that matters.
	It's the pleasure of all mankind.
	It's like, that's just Satanism once removed.
	That you give up the good for the sake of pleasure.
	Now, if it's your pleasure, that's more obvious Satanism.
	If it's this abstract pleasure of someone else...
	Then you're giving up the good fundamentally for power.
	Because everyone who proposes these ideas of this Kantian abstract hot pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number, all that sort of bullshit, the reason why that's tempting for people, I'm not speaking of you, I know that you're playing devil's advocate here, but the reason why that's tempting for people is for the simple, tragic, awful reason that Everybody thinks they're going to be in control.
	Everyone thinks, well, they're going to be the one who takes the money from the selfish grandmother and hands it out to the poor people who will sing praises and hosannas to your name for saving them from the wretchedness of their poverty.
	And everyone imagines that they're going to be the one in the devil's shoes, taking with force from these people and handing out the stolen goods to others.
	And that's why it's compelling.
	And people can say, well, you're supposed to be motivated by that.
	You're supposed to be motivated by nothing at all.
	It's like, but that's not true.
	I mean, everybody who puts forward these ideas, right?
	They're always the guy taking the money from the grandmother and giving it to the poor people in Africa.
	You know who they never are?
	They're never the grandmother. Because if they were the grandmother, they would already have killed themselves and willed all of their money to the poor people in Africa.
	That's automatically achievable.
	And not illegal.
	You won't go to jail for killing yourself.
	So anybody who says, oh yes, well we should be able to kill people to redistribute their resources to the poor people in Africa, it's like, why are you still alive?
	You could have killed yourself and wielded all of your resources to the poor people in Africa.
	Right? I mean, it's just a devil's bargain.
	You will be in control of stripping resources from this group by force and then handing out, you will be a god among men, you will be a giver of gifts, a bringer of benefits and value to others, blah, blah, blah, right?
	It's a mere appeal to vanity, and you can cloak it in all of the abstract nonsense that you want, but it's just straight-up Satanism.
	You don't have to be good.
	You don't have to earn the value that you are going to give to others.
	You don't have to earn that. No, no, no, no.
	You see, you can just go kill someone and redistribute the value that they have, that they earned.
	That's what you should be doing.
	Just go murder people.
	Take their resources that you have not earned, and then hand them out as if they're yours.
	So be a murderer and a thief, and in return, people will really like you.
	They'll really like you. You'll get a lot of power.
	Because, you know, there'll be these poor people that you're going to hand out all this stuff to, but, you know, some of those poor people you won't like.
	Some of those poor people are just going to be Trump supporters.
	And so, you know, and then you get this power to control others, right?
	So you've stolen... You've murdered and you've got all these resources and then you get the sick joy of watching the desperate poor people who are now dependent on you, right?
	Who's now dependent upon you, right?
	Because, I mean, we know this from foreign aid.
	I did the shows about this like 15 years ago.
	Foreign aid, what happens?
	Well, we're going to take all this food from From the farmers.
	We're going to take this food from the farmers and then we're going to just take it out to Madagascar and Sierra Leone and Kenya and we're just going to give all this food to the poor people there.
	It's like, yeah, because fuck the farmers, right?
	Fuck the local farmers in Africa.
	They've got to live. No, they don't have to live.
	So you take all of this food, you dump it on the market in Africa, and all that happens is the local farmers go out of business.
	You've just completely screwed them.
	And in a lot of places in Africa, farming is pretty bloody tough.
	It's really dry. And so if you're not cultivating the soil, if you're not irrigating the soil, the soil goes to shit.
	It goes to Sahara, right?
	And so you've just destroyed local agriculture.
	Not only have you destroyed local agriculture, you've destroyed all of the networks that bring the food from the farms to the villages and the towns.
	All this free stuff, right?
	So rather than a population being self-sufficient and hard work being rewarded and families staying together, well, you just turn everyone into welfare dependents and then you have all this power and control.
	Now, they may be happy in the moment, sure.
	Sure they'll be happy in the moment.
	But in the long run, for the next generation or two, things will just get worse and worse and worse.
	And then because you don't just go and hand this food out to the people directly, you have to give the food to the government.
	And then the government will then hand out food or withhold it based upon political allegiance and conformity to what the government wants.
	So you've just created a tyranny.
	And then because the government is so powerful, because you gave the government all this free stuff to hand out to the people, because the government is so powerful now, the most brutal and horrific examples of humanity will now fight and lie and kill to gain control of the government.
	Which means you now have the most oppressive government structure run by the very worst people.
	Because that's what Satanism does, right?
	It gives you free stuff, takes your virtue, eats your soul.
	So, yeah, but thanks. I know that you were playing devil's advocate position, but I appreciate you bringing that stuff up.
	It's very interesting, and it's, you know, to me, Kantianism is just straight up cooked over.
	It's Satanism without Satan, right?
	And this is why Kant had to basically come about during the scientific process And so they had to have some other abstract way to get Satanism to work, and the way they did it was through this kind of stuff.
	But thank you very much. Very interesting question.
	All right, if you have another comment or a question or issue, I am happy to hear.
	Thinking what you're talking about there reminds me of the original Pilot Zone episode, a nice place to visit.
	Thank you, old man.
	Never got anything.
	Never got a treat.
	Gets everything he wants.
	And has delivered it for eternity.
	I don't know if you've seen the episode.
	Yeah, I guess he's in hell.
	Every little thing you desire, every little craving you want you to have.
	And you're not happy.
	Yeah, exactly. When do we ever want to know what we really want, right?
	And... I'm so sorry I'm having a tough time hearing you.
	But yeah, I mean, we desperately want to get what we want, and that's a fine thing.
	And then the moment we get what we want, we have to move on to the next thing, for sure.
	We want a cessation of labor, for sure.
	And this is why we invent so many labor-saving devices.
	But, you know, it's like that old line from the West Wing.
	It's like, well, we go to Mars next.
	Why? Because we already went to the moon, and Mars is next.
	So, yeah, we overcome obstacles, and then we overcome the next set of obstacles, and then we overcome the next set of obstacles, and that's what we like to do.
	If you have any sort of self-esteem, otherwise you generally get overwhelmed and exhausted and so on, but that's usually if you've had a pretty...
	A pretty rough childhood. But yeah, I mean this idea that we're just going to end up with no challenges and we're just going to sit around and so on.
	You know, I mean you know the number of people who've I'm retired.
	You know, they're, ah, I can't wait.
	I'm finally retired. And then, you know, within a couple of months, they're like, I'm going insane from boredom.
	And they go back to work, right? Because, I mean, particularly men, right?
	I think women are more comfortable with not doing as much.
	But men, you know, it's just the way we are.
	We've got to act.
	All right. Any other questions, comments?
	On your mind, my friends.
	Going once, going twice.
	Would you see how to go through the questions?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Wow.
	Well, first of all, big fan, and this is a really impromptu question.
	I'm about to hit 40 years old.
	I really do think I've not yet hit my stride in life.
	I really do think I'm capable of doing more, of serving the world more.
	You inspire me.
	Can you give any thoughts about possibly getting some additional gasoline in your tank and doing more things in life, again, to serve the world in the second half of life when the first half of life didn't really have all that much traction?
	Do whatever you'd like with that answer.
	Again, I'm a huge fan, and this is just totally an impromptu question.
	Thank you. Well, I appreciate that.
	That's a very good question.
	First of all, the sense of underachievement is a good thing.
	Assuming that you're not just a sadist, or rather a masochist who just enjoys torturing himself with potential and so on.
	So the fact that you are concerned about a lack of...
	Sorry, you're going to have to mute yourself because I'm getting an echo here.
	But the fact that you're concerned about underachievement is a good thing.
	Because it means that there is gas in your tank, right?
	Right. I don't sit there and say, gee, if I'd only willed it longer or harder or better, I'd be seven feet tall, right?
	Because I'm almost six foot.
	I grew as tall as I could grow and that's it, right?
	So I don't have any particular sense of underachievement.
	I do sometimes review my career choices with a mixture of pride and occasional horror.
	But, you know, so far so good.
	So the fact that you have a sense of underachievement is probably a good thing.
	It probably means that you do have some gas in your tank.
	Now, I will let you in on a little secret, because I know there's some people who look at me as a bit of an idea hamster and all of that, but I'll let you in on a little bit of a secret.
	So, when it comes to achieving good in the world, a lot of times we believe that we must be motivated by the, quote, positive emotions.
	Ah, I must do good in the world because of my love of humanity.
	I must do good in the world because of my desire for everyone to be happier.
	I must do good in the world. No, that's all nonsense.
	Now, it's not nonsense in that you should never be motivated by the more, quote, positive emotions.
	It's just that that's kind of a given.
	Of course, I love humanity.
	Of course, I want to improve happiness in the world and so on.
	That's just kind of a given.
	So, that's not where the challenge is.
	The challenge. Ah, are you ready?
	Here's the challenge. Here's your petrol.
	Here's your unleaded.
	Here's your jet fuel.
	You know, when I was working up north, we'd sometimes have to mix in jet fuel to our heaters because it was so damn cold.
	Get to minus 40, minus 45.
	So here's your jet fuel for the second half of your life.
	So being motivated by the positive emotions, that's easy.
	And it doesn't give you that much power.
	It gives you some. But you need to embrace the darker side in order to get real propulsion in this world.
	Let me give you an example before you all recoil in horror.
	Let me give you an example of what I mean.
	So, there was a guy who was in charge of a, he ran a show called America's Most Wanted.
	And his kid or someone, I don't honestly remember the details, but one of his family members was the victim of a terrible, brutal, horrible crime.
	And so he dedicated himself to catching criminals.
	And obviously did a huge amount of good in the world through this show, America's Most Wanted, where a bunch of criminals were caught.
	So, was he motivated by a love of humanity?
	Well, I'm sure he was to some degree.
	Was he motivated by anger and horror at what had happened to his family member?
	Yes, he was.
	And if he'd have said, listen, I'm only going to do things in the world that are motivated by the very sunniest, happiest, and most positive of emotions, he wouldn't have got shit done.
	Compared to what he did get done, the man harnessed his Jungian dark side.
	Right? I mean, the catch-a-predator guys, the guys who pose as underage kids and then catch people who are trying to meet up for pretty negative stuff with these underage kids, okay, did they all have pretty happy childhoods?
	I bet a lot of them didn't.
	I bet a lot of them were preyed on people when they themselves were children and they growing up With a goal to reduce this predatory behavior in society.
	I actually know who you're talking about.
	That's John Walsh.
	Do you know his story? I vaguely remember it.
	Yeah, I can volunteer. Of course, this is all at the top of my head.
	To the best of my knowledge, he was a real estate developer in Florida, like the Miami area.
	And he had a 10-year-old son named Adam.
	It was he and his wife's only son.
	He was in a department store in a mall.
	And the child separated from him.
	The child was abducted.
	The child was eventually discovered as murdered, unfortunately.
	And he did use that energy, exactly as you said, to not just create America's Most Wanted, but to actually create some organization devoted to Basically finding missing children.
	I'm actually personally inspired by him.
	It was really coincidental that you mentioned that.
	Okay, so good.
	So we're, I'm sure, in the vicinity, or if not downright, landing on truth.
	So this is a guy who awoke in the most brutal possible fashion to The predations that evil, violent criminals can have in the world and dedicated his life to fighting these bastards, right?
	And about as successful, I think, as you could possibly be.
	I still remember how lizard-eyed and intense he was in those shows from when I was a kid, right?
	And so we like to stay on the bright, sunny side of things and say, well, I just want to be motivated by...
	Unicorns, rainbows, Hallmark cards, and love of humanity and so on.
	And that's fine. I have no issue with that.
	And I think that's a fine thing to work with.
	But it's not the only thing to work with.
	It's not the only thing to work with.
	So, harness the darkness.
	Harness the darkness. This guy, John, I think, what is his name?
	John. He harnessed the darkness and used it to fight against evildoers.
	And, I mean, you could see, I didn't know his story when I watched his show occasionally when I was younger, but you could really see that there was more than a hobbyist's intensity to this particular approach, right?
	And he really did.
	He dug in and, I mean, you'd never want anything like this to happen to anyone, but he did about the most good that you could possibly do given the situation and circumstance that he was under, right?
	I mean, he saved many more kids than was taken from him and many more people as a whole.
	And not just the people, right, but the people those criminals would have preyed on down the road and so on, right?
	So you can think of lots of people like this either in your own life or you can see them as a whole, the people who have – I mean, I would put myself in this category as well, right?
	I mean, having had a brutal and violent and preyed upon childhood...
	I wish to make the case for peaceful parenting to as wide an audience as humanly possible, and I wanted to harness the darkness.
	Because you harness the darkness, if you have a lot of darkness within you, and many of us do, many of us do, and everyone does to some degree or another, and even if you had a pretty happy childhood or a very happy childhood, the darkness is still out there in the world, and it's kind of Coming for you, coming for me, right? So the darkness is there, and what do you do with it?
	What do you do with the darkness? What do you do with the anger, or the rage, or the fear, or the anxiety?
	What do you do? Well, you have to try and find a way to harness the darkness in service of the light.
	to harness the darkness in service of the light.
	And when I was goal panning, I would sometimes think about this.
	I mean, we would take this, a Pionjao drill, we would take these drill bits that may be, I don't know, six to eight feet long, and you'd use this drill that would jump up and down like a jackhammer and drive these poles into the ground, and at the bottom would be a sample collector.
	And you would keep...
	Mounting poles on top of poles and driving it down until you simply couldn't go down any further because that would be the bedrock.
	Because gold is heavy and so gold settles over, you know, millions of years.
	Gold settles on the bedrock.
	So you drill down and you pull out this sample from right above the bedrock and then you gold pan it, you swirl it around and And you see if you can find any unusual amount of gold.
	I didn't actually look for gold like I could put it in my pocket and sell it or anything like that.
	I looked for indications of gold so that you could try and find the path of the glaciers and you could get back to the gold source.
	And there would be a mine, right?
	And then you would make your money that way.
	I mean, I was paid to do it, but I wasn't looking for gold like chunks.
	I was looking for indications of gold that you could track back to its source And find the mine.
	Now, to get down there, yeah, we needed axes sometimes to chop through the permafrost.
	I came out sometimes with a flamethrower to burn my way through the permafrost.
	We had loud machines, and it was dangerous work, and Surprisingly hot and sweaty work because you had to wrestle with a lot of stuff out there with your snowshoes on and so on.
	And what was the purpose of all of this?
	Well, you had to dig all the way down to the Stigian depths, you know, sometimes 100, sometimes 200 feet down to look for the gold and bring the gold up to the light of day.
	So we had to go and excavate an enormous amount of darkness to try and get gold that would gleam in the light.
	There's my rather strange analogy for digging down into the darkness to get that which is the brightest and the most beautiful.
	So, for yourself, I would say that you probably have not achieved as much as you want to achieve because you are not embracing and harnessing the darkness.
	Who knows how to fight the devil better than the devil?
	Who knows how to fight the devil better than the devil?
	To catch a predator, these guys become predators.
	America's most wanted, this guy to catch hunters became a hunter.
	You have to make friends with the devil if you're going to unseat him from the world.
	You have to internalize evildoers in order to unravel their power in the world.
	Taking down immorality in the world is way more complicated than defusing a bomb.
	You know, most of these cheap movies where there's this countdown and you've got to defuse the bomb and is it the red wire or the blue wire?
	Right? Well, defusing the power of evildoers requires that you...
	Really understand evildoers.
	So I've got a first person.
	It's the first novel I've written with an eye.
	The first person.
	And yeah, it's a significant evildoer is a major part, a central part of the novel.
	And I'm really excavating the mind of an evildoer on a political and psychological and familial level.
	And I have spent a lot of time thinking about evildoers.
	What motivates them?
	What makes them tick? Right?
	If you want to hunt the lion, you better know how the lion can hunt you, or you're going to lose.
	Not just lose the hunt, but lose an arm, lose your life.
	So my guess would be that, and maybe this is your Respect for the John guy who ran the show, America's Most Wanted.
	Maybe you need to excavate a little dig down into the darkness and use that as a motive power.
	Because virtue is two things.
	Virtue is two things.
	We know one, we always forget the other.
	Virtue is love of the good, And hatred of the evil.
	Virtuous love of the good and hatred of the evil.
	Faith in the Christian context is a reverence for Jesus and a love of God and a fear and hatred of the devil.
	You need both of those things to navigate yourself by.
	There's you, there's love, and there's hate.
	This is the triangulation you need to guide yourself through life.
	Now, very few people are going to get upset at you for loving.
	But if you hate, then you become powerful.
	Now, hatred doesn't mean acting out, it doesn't mean violence, it doesn't mean any of these things.
	It means having a deep understanding of that which is the enemy of the good.
	The John guy who ran this show hated criminals, hated them, which meant he studied them obsessively and worked to catch as many of them as humanly possible and did an amazing job.
	So, in this hyper-feminized world that we are currently ensconced in, we are allowed to love, but hatred has got a bad rap.
	Here's another example. If you go to your average cancer researcher who has dedicated his, or we already had the guy, who dedicated her life to curing cancer, I guarantee you, nine times out of ten, when you say, why did you become a cancer researcher?
	It's like, the answer is, because my father died slowly and painfully of cancer.
	And this is a woman who loved her father.
	And...
	And the bastard illness called cancer took her father from her in a slow, ugly, painful, inexorable, exhausting, economically and emotionally debilitating fashion.
	So sure, she loves health, but she hates cancer.
	She hates cancer.
	And that hatred of cancer is going to be one of the things that are central to curing cancer.
	If she was only motivated by a love of health, I know she'd be a nutritionist or a personal trainer or something, right?
	But because she hates cancer, we've got a chance to be cancer.
	I hate the initiation of violence.
	I hate the initiation of violence.
	And I hate the mindset that gives people permission to do that, particularly against children.
	Hate it! Hate it!
	With a thousand burning suns, passion's worth of emotional intensity.
	Hate it. And I love peace, reason, negotiation.
	Love them. Now, if all I did was love reason...
	I would be promoting something without recognizing what impedes it from spreading.
	But because I've also studied anti-rationality, I know the barriers to the spread of reason, which is childhood trauma.
	So I've worked to unpack and examine those.
	It's very hard to get in trouble For love.
	But it's almost impossible to be effective through love alone.
	I mean, Jesus himself took a whip to the money changers.
	Hated that, right?
	So I would say, if you want to have greater effect, in the second half of your life, dig a little, or dig a lot.
	Figure out not just what you love, and what you want to see created, You know, every artist who creates something beautiful both loves beauty and hates ugliness.
	And it's funny, too, because I didn't know this question was coming, but I said, you know, at the beginning of this, when I said, why did I write my novel?
	The future. Because I hate 1984.
	I love the artistry of the book, but I hate the ineffectiveness of the book.
	So I wrote something beautiful because I hate ugliness.
	Every architect who creates a beautiful building hates ugly buildings.
	Somebody says, Tim, always a great theological fount of wisdom.
	He says, in Romans, Paul made the point that even God loves and hates when he quoted the verse, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.
	And people will very much criticize you for embracing the darkness.
	Because that's where the power is.
	And of course, evil people want you focused only on love.
	Because it neuters you.
	Evil people want you focused only on love because it neuters you.
	You are blind to them.
	Somebody just posted a meme with this guy.
	Bye.
	Thank you.
	Now, let me just check this.
	Was it? It's not Matt Walsh.
	That's the same guy, right? It's the same guy that we were talking about earlier.
	Anyway. Yeah, yeah, sorry. So, Unsolved Mysteries, it says, Cotton Eye Joe.
	Where did he come from?
	Where did he go? If you have any information, please contact our producers.
	So anyway, tell me about your life.
	Does sort of what I'm saying make any sense with regards to your experience?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Yeah, Matt Walsh is just something totally different.
	So I am about to hit 40.
	I'm very much aware that I'm approaching the halfway point in my life.
	I've been working in insurance for 16 years, and I have not really advanced very much in the organization, but that actually doesn't bother me because I Kind of identified now that my value set is a little bit different.
	You mentioned, by the way, entrepreneurship.
	I just don't know what to do.
	And I don't want to lose my income stream for anything not nearly as material as what I currently have set up.
	I know that I could do more, again, serving the world, and also for material gain.
	Hang on, sorry. What's your income stream for at the moment?
	I'm so sorry.
	What's my income stream? I have a salary job with an insurance company.
	No, I understand that. But, I mean, do you have a wife, kids?
	I mean, what is your income stream for?
	Oh, aha, yeah.
	No, I'm single. I presently have no spouse, no children.
	So what is your income stream for?
	Honestly, I invest a lot.
	Okay, so what is your income?
	What are your assets for?
	What are your assets for? My future.
	Hopefully one day being able to disconnect and figure out what I want to do.
	I'm sorry, I don't have a clear answer.
	I know I probably should.
	No, no, that's fine that you don't.
	Sorry, you've got to put some headset in or something.
	I can't do the conversation if I'm hearing myself echo.
	Or at least mute while I'm talking.
	Sorry, I know it's annoying, but...
	Yeah, what's your money for?
	So you're 40 years old, you don't have a wife, you don't have kids.
	It's fine, right? But...
	Okay, what's your money for?
	You say, ah, my money, you see, is to buy me future freedom.
	Okay? But you've been working for 16 years.
	Right? So, why don't you have freedom yet?
	Well, I just don't think I've hit that inflection point where I can basically disconnect from the drug of a salary.
	You know, I think one of those intellectuals, I think Nicholas Taleb said, salary is a drug that they give you to give up your dreams.
	I butchered that quote. It might not even be that guy.
	I totally agree.
	I'm on a salary drug and I'm terrified of the risk of striking out, of kind of making up my own income or, you know, doing something self.
	And to answer your question, I actually don't know what my income is for.
	Right now, I'm just living for myself right now, just to be perfectly honest and blunt about it.
	Have you come close to marriage?
	Honestly, no. And why do you think that is?
	Well, you know, I... First of all, I never consider myself a very attractive man.
	I don't want to get stereotypical or anything, but I'm definitely in the shorter left side of the bell curve.
	I just never really had the confidence to approach women.
	Mostly because of the height?
	Oh, yeah. Yeah.
	Are you crazy?
	I hope so.
	No, listen. I'm going to help you with this height thing, okay?
	I'm going to help you with the height thing.
	I'm going to solve your height problem right now.
	Okay. So, if all short men are unattractive, why are there short men?
	Well, would you mind if I respond with a bit of a theory of my own about that?
	Sure. All right, and go ahead and feel free to shoot this down.
	Gosh, if you kind of think back to, like, elementary science classrooms, there's this stereotypical poster of the evolution of man, and you have the monkey-looking guy on the left side of that poster, and as the image progresses rightward, you have these larger, sort of more human-looking men as you have Neanderthals, and they evolve into You know, like cavemen type people.
	And then on the right side of the poster, you have a modern looking man that you see, you know, walking down the street.
	And I've believed that, and I'm so sorry to talk about stereotypes, and I know you're happily married, but by and large, most women kind of prefer, I don't know how to articulate this well, but taller, well-built men.
	And yeah, there are short men, but they're kind of They're still kind of tall relative to...
	I don't know.
	I'm falling apart. I'm sorry.
	Okay, so let's go back. If all short men were unattractive, then women would never choose them and short genes would vanish, right?
	Yeah. So, some women will marry and reproduce with short men.
	Otherwise, there'd be no such thing as...
	Short men, right? Yeah, but can I come back and say that height is relative?
	Like, I don't know.
	You know, my arguments against that has kind of fallen apart.
	Okay, hang on.
	Stay with me for a sec. All right.
	Are you bald? No, actually, I'm not.
	I actually have a... I like my hair.
	I'm not bald. Okay, so you're bald.
	I'm bald, right? Here's my big awakening when it came to baldness, right?
	Some women like bald men.
	How do we know that? They're bald men.
	That's right! Do any men like bald women?
	That's very, very rare.
	Let's just say no.
	Let's just say no, because we can't caveat this stuff into oblivion, right?
	So the reason why there are bald men, but not bald women, is that some women like bald men, and...
	No men like bald women, which is why women don't go bald, right?
	Right. Because there were bald women, but no man would mate with them.
	Whereas there are bald men, but women will mate with them, which is why 90% of men end up balding.
	Gotcha. So when I lost my hair in my 20s, You know, you're like, oh no, because more hair is more attractive.
	And it's like, well no, that's not the case, because if that was the case, there'd be no bald men.
	So, I want you to think of all the short guys who managed to mate over the past couple of million years.
	They all did it.
	All of them. Otherwise, your short jeans would never have made it, right?
	Right, right. Who are you to disrespect all their suffering and the fact that they were able to mate and pass these glorious short jeans down to you?
	Who am I to say, oh, all the bald guys who were able to mate handed me my baldness jeans, but I'm just going to sit there and say, well, I guess I'm unattractive now.
	No, the fact that I have these jeans means that I was attractive.
	Bald was attractive. And the fact that you have these jeans means that short is attractive.
	And I can tell you one of the things that is attractive about short, good health and longevity.
	Tall guys just don't live as long.
	On average, their hearts have to work more.
	Their needs get fucked, usually.
	They're more prominent in battle.
	They tend to get hit more.
	So you are the proud recipient of the short genes that made it.
	And the only reason the short jeans made it, unlike the women's bald jeans, is because women were willing and happy, or at least willing, to mate.
	Gotcha, thank you.
	Do women, I mean, there was some woman I saw, she was in the news because she made like, I don't know, four million dollars in a couple of months on OnlyFans or whatever, right?
	Now, quick question.
	Do you think she either has A, large breasts, or B, small breasts?
	I honestly think I kind of know the answer because I kind of keep abreast of the news.
	I get it. A breast of the news.
	I get it. Anyway, go on.
	Oh, that was an accidental pun.
	Sure, absolutely. Completely accidental.
	Totally. Yeah.
	Okay, so she's got jerks for days, right?
	I actually don't think so.
	Yes, she does. Yes, she does.
	Now, in general, there are a lot of men who prefer large breasts over small breasts, right?
	However, there are small breasts for women, right?
	Women have small breasts. So lots of women have small breasts.
	Now, why is that? Because some women or some men prefer women with small breasts.
	So, you have hair, I'm bald.
	Some women prefer me to you.
	I'm taller, you're shorter.
	Some women prefer me to you.
	Some women prefer you to me.
	So, if you look at the breast size, there are small-breasted women.
	There's a lot of them.
	Because men preferred or chose small-breasted women.
	So a woman can say, oh, well, but if I had larger breasts, I would be more attractive.
	It's like, you would be.
	Two men who like that.
	But there are tons of men who don't, or don't care, or whatever, right?
	Like over the last, you know, maybe as a result of Hispanic culture or whatever, but over the last couple of decades, you now have to have like this Kim Kardashian butt that's like a small planet you can use as a stepladder to hang the top of a Christmas tree, right?
	You just got to have this butt that sticks out, right?
	This Brazilian butt or whatever it is, right?
	And people getting butt lifts and butt implants and so on.
	That wasn't a thing when I was a kid.
	That's just a new thing, right?
	Now you got to have a big butt, but a small waist, right?
	If you look at yourself at what is generally a marketing ideal, then you can always find yourself short of attributes or missing something or, right?
	like Every woman can look at Kim Kardashian's ludicrous, cartoony, Jessica Rabbit, Hourglass figure and say, well, that's not me!
	It's like, but she's a total freak!
	She's a total freak, and she's not happy.
	If you had her figure, you too could have four divorces or however many she's racked up, right?
	So, there are women who like short guys.
	There are women who like short guys.
	There are men who like small breasts.
	Yes, there are women who like bald guys.
	And what you're doing is you're imposing your judgment of yourself and displacing a woman's judgment of you.
	If a woman, let's say I had hair, and a woman liked me because of my hair, well, most men lose their hair.
	So what's she going to do then, right?
	She's going to have to put up with me as a personality, right?
	Sorry, you were going to say... I was actually just going to say I concur.
	So what you've done is you've said, I am going to allow advertising to make me reject myself.
	And I am not going to overcome the adversity that nature puts in everyone's hearts and mind to fuck with their confidence.
	Everyone has something.
	And even if you are someone like, I don't know, Brad Pitt, who's tall and gorgeous and wealthy and famous and talented, well, then what?
	Then all that he thinks is, well, people only like me for my looks or my money.
	So even he has his insecurities about being loved.
	There's no way out of it.
	There's no way out of it.
	So I could have looked at myself and said, well, you know, but I'm bold.
	And the ideal is hair, so I guess I'm just not that attractive, right?
	Well, fuck that. What I want to be is bald and crazy confident.
	That's intriguing, right?
	Because if the woman looks at you and sees confidence, then she's intrigued as to how you got it.
	But if you take whatever physical deficiency you have, and we all have them, we all have them, if you take whatever physical deficiency you have, and you use that as an excuse to stay out of the dating game, then you've just disrespected the hundreds of generations of short guys who battled, fought, and died to hand you your precious gene set.
	Because the woman is not going to judge your height.
	Seriously, a woman of any quality, she's not going to judge your height.
	She's going to judge your confidence.
	Now, if you reject yourself, see a woman walks into the room, right?
	If you have already rejected yourself as being unattractive, okay, the woman has just met you.
	Who knows more about you, you or her?
	I know more about me.
	Right. So if you reject yourself, and you know infinitely more about yourself than she does, she's going to say, okay, I'm not going to disagree.
	I assume he knows himself, and if he rejects himself, I'm not going to accept him.
	Why would I disagree with him? You know, that would be like me knowing nothing about...
	Egyptian hieroglyphics and then arguing with a translation expert in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
	It's like he knows infinitely more about the topic than I do.
	Why the hell would I disagree with that?
	I'm not going to argue with the guy.
	He's an expert, I'm not.
	That's why a woman judges your confidence, not your appearance.
	Because if you're confident that you're saying, I value myself for things that I can choose.
	I don't value myself for things I can't choose.
	If I was down on myself or thought I was unattractive because I was bald, then I'd be saying, my sense of self-worth and attractiveness is entirely fucking dependent on things I have zero control over.
	I have no control over whatsoever.
	You can't control your height.
	I can't control my bald.
	Now, you can get lifts.
	I can get hair transplants.
	Not that I ever would. Because fuck that.
	I'm not going to be ashamed of something I have no control over.
	I'm not going to let it affect my sense of self-value.
	Now, if I was fat, that's a different matter.
	I have some control over that, right?
	If I was noodle-armed, no-exercise dough guy, right?
	Okay, I have some control over that.
	Some, you know, like I'm not going to be a super muscle guy, but, you know, I have some control over whether I do some exercise or not.
	So the essential thing I'm trying to get across to you is don't give a fucking inch of your self-esteem for things that are beyond your control.
	Should I be proud for being blue-eyed?
	No, I didn't control that.
	I have no control over that. Should you feel unattractive for being short?
	Fuck no, you've got no control over that.
	It doesn't land on you.
	It's not a reflection of your character.
	It's not like, good men are tall and bad men are short.
	It's just an accident of genetics.
	You don't let accidents of genetics determine your worth.
	Because your worth is your character.
	Your virtue. Your commitment to the good, to the true, to the honorable, to the noble.
	That's your value.
	That you can control.
	That you have some say over.
	But don't surrender one inch of your self-image to things you have zero control over.
	That's just letting the accidents of genetics determine your entire value.
	My God! What a nightmare.
	Thank you. I appreciate it.
	And any woman who won't date you because you're short has saved you one divorce.
	And I'll tell you why.
	So a woman who says, well, I'm not going to date him because he's short has no capacity to attach to that which is truly you.
	Your height is not you.
	My bald is not me.
	My blue eyes are not me.
	What is me is what is unique about me.
	And whether I have the jeans for bald or for hair is not me.
	It's like saying, I am me because opposable thumbs.
	It's like, no.
	Opposable thumbs is pretty common across the planet for human beings.
	I'm me because nose.
	No? Pretty common across the planet for human beings to have noses.
	Hashtag Voldemort. Don't say it.
	So, what is you?
	What someone is going to fall in love with is something unique to you, which is why she chooses you over some other guy.
	A guy who's tall, if the woman says, well, I will date him because he's tall and I won't date this one because he's short...
	She's just confessed that she has nothing of personal quality in her character that someone will love.
	She has nothing of personal quality in her character that someone will love.
	Nothing. She's tits and ass and sexual access and greed.
	She's like a Pac-Man on your nads and not in the way you like.
	A woman who judges a man solely for his physical appearance is confessing That she has nothing other than sexual access to bring to the table.
	She has nothing other than physical attractiveness to bring to the table.
	And what that means, a woman who believes that she has nothing but physical attractiveness to bring to the table, which is the mirror image if you focus on your height, a woman who thinks she has only physical attractiveness to bring to the table, will go insane over 40%.
	And I'm not kidding about that.
	She would go insane over 40 because she loses her physical attractiveness and what else has she got?
	What else has she got?
	You have much more than height just as a woman has much more than tits to bring to the table.
	The height is irrelevant because it's not you.
	That's just an accident. Any woman who judges you For an accident of birth is like judging you for being a particular race.
	Same as judging you for being tall or short, with hair or without hair, blue eyes or brown eyes.
	It's just a bigot. Just a bigot.
	The reason why short men flourished is it kept shallow, weird, dangerous, Amber Heard style women away from them.
	Because the women had to be looking for qualities of character Rather than accidents of birth.
	Bald was a beautiful shield for me.
	Short can be a beautiful shield for you.
	To keep the shallow, dangerous people away from you.
	The people who are going to judge others as good or bad based on accidents of birth.
	Which is about as bigoted a thing as you could conceive of in this world or any other.
	You walk into the room, I'm bald.
	Hey, if you don't like the fact that I'm bald, I don't care.
	It just means that you won't date me for something completely beyond my control.
	Okay, good. Then you should go and date someone else.
	Because you don't care about qualities of character.
	You care about accidents of birth.
	That's pathetic. And it's a confession that that woman has zero qualities of character to bring to the table other than physical attractiveness and sexual access.
	She's a hole with mascara.
	She's a Nazgul. Now you go into a room and some women are like, oh, he's short, I don't want to date him.
	Fantastic. Thank you.
	Thank you for saving me.
	My future family from the Ravages.
	A blind, idiotic, entitled divorce.
	She'd just rip you up.
	So insecure. That she would judge a man for something utterly beyond his control?
	And the funny thing is that such a woman would probably be an anti-racist, which is fine, right?
	And would say, it's so wrong to judge people according to their race.
	They didn't choose their race.
	It's an accident of birth.
	Oh, that guy's short.
	I wouldn't date him. What?
	You're exactly right. It's the same thing.
	And anybody who's that contradictory...
	And here's the thing, too.
	Women don't even care that much about height.
	What they care about, these kinds of shallow women, what they care about is status.
	That's a whole different animal. Because having a tall guy is somewhat higher status, maybe like having a guy with great hair is somewhat higher status.
	The Mesmerist.
	There was some guy in The Mesmerist.
	There was a blogger.
	I remember this blogger just drooling over his pretty, pretty hair.
	I think he showed up in Margin Call with Jeremy Irons as well.
	But yeah, like the Don Johnson thing.
	There's that perfect hair. I remember there was a guy I worked with up north for a short amount of time.
	I used a description of him in Almost, the novel Almost, at almostnovel.com.
	Because, yeah, he had perfect hair.
	Like, it dried perfectly. He came out of the swimming pool.
	You could see it, like, slowly slithering into perfect form.
	It's incredible. But they'll just...
	Those people who judge you for the accidents of birth...
	Oof.
	Oof. They want a tall guy or a guy with great hair, because then other women say, oh, wow, like, she could get a tall guy or a guy with great hair, right?
	Okay, so what are you, some fucking pet to be paraded around?
	For her vanity, for her status?
	That's not love. That's not love.
	And how is that kind of woman going to be as a mom, right?
	The baby's colicky and has been up for, you know, three days straight.
	Where's her status then?
	Where's her commitment to virtue?
	Where's her kindness and generosity and goodness?
	Where's all that? Gone.
	Gone, gone, gone.
	It's not even close to there.
	No, no, no, no. These are the women who have affairs.
	These are the women who freak out and go to Botox.
	These are the women who are exhausting because they're empty shells of accidents propped up by Hormones and marketing.
	There's a woman out there who wants to choose you for the qualities of your character, not the accidental vertebrae count that you inherited through no fault or virtue of your own.
	You go in and you're confident.
	That's going to be very intriguing to a good woman and very interesting.
	And it's also, if you're confident about your looks, or your value, let's say, despite accidents of history, a smart woman, a sensible woman, know what she's going to say?
	She's going to say, oh, fantastic!
	So if he's not troubled by the accidents of birth, he also won't be troubled by the passage of time.
	In other words, if he's going to say, I have value independent of my merely physical accidental attributes.
	Again, not weight and not grooming and taking care of your teeth and things like that.
	Decent eyewear, not taped together.
	So a woman looks at you, you're short and you're confident.
	She says... He is more than the accidents of his birth, which means that I will be more than the accidents of my birth.
	He's got value, independent of his physical attributes.
	That means he's going to treasure me even more for being a good person as we age.
	Because all women get short, so to speak.
	All women's boobs shrink, so to speak.
	All women lose physical beauty.
	All women lose physical beauty.
	So if you won't be down on yourself for, quote, deficiencies that are pure accident, then the accidental or inevitable scrubbing of her physical beauty under the sands of time will not be as traumatic to her.
	A woman who chooses you just for your looks...
	Knows that you're choosing her just for her looks.
	What's going to happen when she pushes 40?
	That loses her looks.
	She's going to go mental. So, that's my answer to that.
	Well, thank you so much.
	I mean, I'm flattered with your basically time and thought investment.
	Please post to locals or elsewhere so I can re-listen.
	You are very welcome and I really do...
	Oh, that's interesting. There's a couple of tall guys in here.
	Let me just read that before we wind up for the evening.
	Let's just read that up. Okay. Somebody says, I'm six foot five.
	I have back and knee problems.
	I stay active, though. Yes.
	I'm over six foot. Knees of eight since I was 14.
	Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah.
	There certainly is a...
	It could be that baldness is a sort of side effect of testosterone and so on, but, you know...
	Again, evolution is a blank slate.
	Baldness could as easily be a side effect of estrogen as well, but that's not the way things play.
	So let's see here. What else have we got from tall guys?
	Oh, I mean, my friend, one of my best friends when I was a teenager, was 6'6".
	And we would go to see movies, and he would have to sit on the aisle and stretch his leg out.
	His knees would be in utter agony, like three-quarters of the way through the movie.
	And he unfortunately ended up addicted to painkillers, and it got pretty bad, because it was really rough for him.
	Let's see here. What else did I miss?
	Oh, I scrolled up a little too far there.
	A little too far. A little too far.
	Look at pro fighters. They're often bald.
	Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you're a fighter, being bald is helpful because there's less hair to grab and pull and so on, right?
	Let's see here. Somebody says, holy shit, I'm six foot four and I was actually rejected by a woman once who worried my heart wouldn't last long enough for a long-term relationship.
	Well, you know, that's important to keep checking on these kinds of things.
	Short guys date taller women.
	It's the shorties like my wife, 5'1", who go after much taller men.
	Your average 5'8 woman will be fine with a 5'5 guy.
	I've seen it many times. Yeah.
	You've seen that kind of stuff too, right?
	Yeah, I dated a woman who was 6'2", I think, once.
	Well, I dated her more than once.
	Let's see here. I think a tall preference is fine.
	If she cares about nothing besides being tall, okay, that's kind of weird.
	But I don't think there's anything wrong with caring about physical attractiveness as a factor or even an important factor.
	Yeah, it is wrong. Yeah, it is wrong.
	And I'm not saying, you know...
	So if someone is taking care of themselves, if they exercise and eat well and they have good grooming and so on, if someone's taking care of themselves, they're doing the best they can.
	They're doing the best they can.
	And are you going to fault them for things...
	Beyond their control. Are you going to fault them for things beyond their control?
	Now, you can, of course, right?
	But if someone eats well, exercises, good grooming, you know, attractive and dresses well and so on, right?
	Okay. That's the very best that they can do with what they've got.
	Now, if you're going to sit there and say, well, but the shape of their face or something or other, I think, okay, well, then you're...
	You're giving up someone who's doing the very best with what they've got for the sake of somebody else who's simply a recipient of accident.
	In other words, you're giving up an entrepreneur for an entitled princess of inheritance.
	Well, I'm not sure about this.
	What about some women just not being attracted to short, stalky, bald men?
	Stalky? I think you mean stalky?
	Well, no, but stocky is a choice, right?
	Stocky is exercise and eating well.
	So, look, you can absolutely say, I'm just not attracted to short, bald men.
	Absolutely. And then you can say, I'm going to reject men of potential quality for complete accidents of birth.
	Okay. Anne Bancroft said, Mel Brooks, she said something like, he was so short, but he was so sure of himself that it just fell for him.
	Yeah, for sure. Confidence in particular when you have, quote, deficiencies to overcome, right?
	Accidents of birth aren't accidents.
	If you choose an ugly woman, odds are she'll produce ugly offspring.
	Same for the inverse. Having sexual aesthetic preference is natural and necessary.
	You choose a woman for her superficial physical qualities because she will likely transfer those qualities to the offspring.
	Now, personally, I think I've only ever met one woman who ate well, exercised, had good grooming, dressed well, and was still ugly.
	Like one woman over the course of my entire life.
	Every other woman I've ever...
	And this was just... I don't know if she had some sort of facial issues, some bone issues or whatever, right?
	But... I've never seen a woman who takes good care of herself who's unattractive.
	It doesn't mean that there's all the same levels of beauty and so on, but no, I've not seen it.
	Let's see here. Marissa Tomei was into short stocky bald men, is that right?
	Performance in bed is also important.
	Oh sure, yeah, of course you want to be a good lover and thoughtful and considerate and all that kind of stuff too.
	Yeah, for sure, for sure.
	Alright, so, yes, listen, I'm glad that we had that aspect of the conversation.
	Very good, very helpful, very important, I dare say.
	So, yeah, thanks everyone so much for dropping by tonight.
	FreeDomain.com forward slash donate.
	Pleased to help a brother philosopher out.
	I would really, really appreciate it.
	And if you want to get my new book, I think it's great.
	I'm so pleased with it. I'm so pleased with it.
	It is freedomain.locals.com.
	That's freedomain.locals.com.
	It's for subscribers only at the moment and will be for the foreseeable future, but you can get the book there.
	And have a wonderful, wonderful evening.
	I love you guys so much.
	Thank you for the great honor of this conversation.
	Lots of love. Take care.

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