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July 27, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:29:27

HOW YOU ARE BETRAYED!

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	Oh, wait. Must do the lighting.
	Must do the lighting. How are you guys doing?
	Good afternoon. Hello to Sweden.
	Are you guys ready for a rant?
	A rant and a half? A rant and three quarters?
	Yay, verily. Oh, yeah, look at that.
	I zoomed out for some interview.
	Oh, gosh, is it time to get my hair done?
	That's right. Yeah, sorry about the eyes out there.
	How are you guys doing? What's new?
	What do you think of the movie A Clockwork Orange?
	It's not particularly...
	I mean, well, acted with Malcolm McDowell and so on.
	It's not particularly interesting to me because, again, it has causeless evil without childhood abuse.
	So it's sort of pointless to me.
	All right. A couple of questions, if you have.
	I am more than happy to hear.
	If you have questions, you can stimulate my rant brain.
	I'm a smidge under the weather.
	I had to get a little cyst removed from my shoulder, and it went kind of deeper, and basically the guy was in there with an echo chamber, spelunking gear, and a light helmet.
	So it was quite something.
	What do you do about bad neighbors?
	I've found that they are worse than bad family because at least you can dissociate from bad family.
	Bad neighbors may be there the rest of your life.
	Well, I actually was talking to a friend of mine who had a bad neighbor and he moved.
	So it may be incumbent upon you to move.
	Bad neighbor can really escalate, man.
	You can really get some crazy stuff.
	So, yeah, I mean, if you really have a bad, malicious, malevolent neighbor, probably well worth it to move because you sure as heck won't be able to make them better.
	What is the meaning of life?
	In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky basically asserts that without God there is no meaning or universal morality.
	Yeah, I was thinking about Ayn Rand in this context just the other day.
	So Ayn Rand was kind of subversive but not in a good way because by attacking and hammering at religion and in particular Christianity of course but by attacking and hammering at religion but without providing an ironclad defense for universal morality she weakened the ties to universal morality that you need to limit the state.
	See if you can't believe in universal morality Universal ethics, if you can't believe in those, you run to the state.
	Because then you descend from the angelic, the magical, the majestic, the platonic, in a sense, the abstract conceptual spiderweb of universality that constitutes the very best that we have to offer the universe.
	You fall from that.
	You fall from grace, really.
	Right? What was the story of Satan?
	The story of Satan was...
	I'm tired of morality.
	I'm tired of universal virtue.
	I'm going to wage war against that which I cannot win, God.
	And I'm going to be cast down into hell.
	And through hell, what I will do is I will tempt people with the material.
	I will tempt people with the material.
	Material gain. What does it matter, says Jesus, if a man gain the whole world, if he lose his soul.
	If he lose his soul.
	So Satan wages war against morality.
	Not God, but morality.
	And he cannot overthrow morality.
	All he can do is distance himself from morality as much as humanly possible or inhumanly possible, so to speak.
	And then...
	He tempts us with the material.
	He tempts us with the lowest aspect of our natures, with a desire for prominence, a desire for fame, a desire for money, a desire for sex, a desire for talent, a desire for envy from others.
	And Ayn Rand was devilish in this kind of way.
	Because she waged war.
	She said she was a moralist and she waged war against the universal virtues that come from religion.
	But she did not provide ironclad defenses for universal moralities that could come from philosophy.
	So that's not a very good thing.
	So you can't get meaning out of materialism.
	Of course. When you deny the highest, like what is the highest aspect of the human mind?
	What is the highest aspect of the human nature?
	Well, the Christians have it right, as do many religious belief systems.
	The Christians have it right in that they say that the essence of humanity is immaterial.
	Boom! That's so right.
	That is so right.
	That the essence of morality is the immaterial.
	Mmm! That's so good.
	It sends tapioca up my vast deference.
	So, what does that mean?
	When we partake of the universal...
	When we partake in philosophy, good, honest, rational, empirical, universal philosophy, when we aim to crystallize thought into eternal universals, that is the closest we can come to partaking of the beatific, the platonic, the godhood.
	So what is the one thing that we can do that other animals cannot do?
	And that is universal abstractions.
	Universal abstractions.
	They say, well, what do the Christians say?
	They say, look, if you devote your life to universal abstractions, you gain immortality.
	That's exactly right.
	That's exactly right.
	If you identify and promulgate, or just promulgate and associate with and participate in universals, things which are true from first principles, undeniably to anybody with any integrity, Things that are true across all time, all space, all truths.
	If you participate and promulgate in those, and if you create so much the better, you are immortal.
	In the same way that if you identify a principle of physics, you've probably seen that meme where Isaac Newton is saying, I like them thick!
	Boy, thick! And they say, well, we can't say that.
	We can't put it that way. He says, oh, fine, then the greater the mass, the greater the attraction.
	Fine. E equals mc squared, inverse square law, 9.8 meters per second per second acceleration to the earth.
	These are universals.
	These are eternal. These existed...
	Virtually infinitely before us.
	They exist, to all intents and purposes, infinitely after us.
	So when we kneel before the hem of the garment, there was a woman in the Bible days, she had been sick so very long, and she heard that Jesus was coming by, so she joined the gathering throne.
	So if we participate in the universal, we participate in the eternal.
	And when we participate in the eternal, we live forever.
	And in fact, we live before we were born, in a sense, because we are participating and partaking and spreading and living with that which has always existed and has always been true.
	The principles of physics, the principles of universal morality, are true in the way that logic is true and valid, in that it is eternal and universal.
	But to pursue the universal means to sacrifice the material, the lust, the mammal.
	To aim for the angel is to castrate the mammal.
	We have to reject our immediate pleasures in order to partake in the universal.
	And this is why atheism leads to statism.
	The statism is a mechanism for satisfying the mammal, for satisfying the body.
	It can't give you truth, reason.
	It's not reason, it's force.
	So it can't give you anything but the opposite of reason, which is subjugation, bribery, exploitation, theft.
	So when you eliminate the universal, the eternal, the moral, through atheism, people swell the power of the state as a means of satisfying the animal.
	The state is a state of nature, always, always and forever.
	The state is a state of nature.
	How do we know that? Because the state is win-lose, and nature is win-lose, always, between species.
	It is win-lose. The lion wins, the zebra loses.
	The crocodile wins, the deer loses.
	The virus wins. The cell loses.
	It's win-lose. Now, participating in the universals and the morals becomes win-win.
	The free market is win-win.
	The free market is absolute defiance of the paradigm of nature of win-lose, which is why when the free market expands, the state diminishes.
	The human, the abstract, the universal property rights and free trade and voluntarism and free association, these all spread at the expense of the sociopathic mammal paradigm of nature's win-lose.
	So what is the meaning of life?
	The meaning of life is to live in a way that is specifically and most deeply human.
	Because we can't live any other way.
	We cannot be an animal.
	We can only be a corrupted person by focusing on the animal lusts, the mere immediate flesh pleasures of the moment.
	As they say, it's not so much that a dog dances well, but that it dances at all.
	That is the miracle. We can't be animals.
	We can only be inhuman.
	You guys are troubled by the depth of this conversation.
	I can see everybody making jokes.
	It's okay. It's all right.
	You can listen to this later. The meaning of life is to participate in as deep and wide and universal a set of truths as you can, because that is the most human thing that we can do.
	It is our most deeply and singularly human ability that we possess.
	To scrapple out of the mineshaft of the material, Into the universals of philosophy.
	Now, how do we know that that's the meaning of life?
	Because meaning...
	It's an abstraction. And if you want meaning, and meaning is an abstraction, meaning must be found in abstractions.
	The greater the meaning, the greater the abstraction.
	The greatest abstractions are universal moral truths.
	Therefore, the greatest meaning that can be had in life, this is kind of a tumble down the stairs syllogism, right?
	The greatest meaning that can be had in life.
	It's the pursuit, creation and promulgation of universal moral truths because that is the most singular abstraction that we possess as a species.
	The meaning has to be human because meaning doesn't occur to the ant.
	The ant is programmed by the material, programmed by the flesh.
	So the meaning is that which is most specifically human to us, which is universal abstractions, and in particular universal moral abstractions.
	So the pursuit and promulgation, the spread of universal morality, is our greatest chance for the greatest meaning that we have.
	Meaning is an abstraction.
	Meaning must be singularly human beings and morality is our greatest abstraction.
	Therefore, meaning must be, must be, the promulgation of universal morality.
	All right.
	Let's say, Steph, wait, replying to...
	You may remember me from saying no to marriage call in years ago.
	I am now married with a child and we have a great marriage, except my wife's materialistic, neglectful boomer parents just moved closer to us but are somehow continuing the pattern of neglect in her life.
	We'd be interested in doing a call in with us sometime.
	Yes, absolutely.
	I'd be happy to.
	All right.
	Any other questions?
	Or I will go into the rant.
	Or, I tell you what, if you want the rant up front, hit me with an R. If you would like a little excerpt from my new novel as a teaser, then hit N. R or N? It's just which one I do first.
	Because you are the people who support philosophy.
	Thank you very much.
	If you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate.
	I'd really appreciate your help.
	Looks like people want a rant.
	Looks like people are...
	You just made a tip.
	What did the leper say to the prostitute?
	I left a tip. Alright, it looks like Rant it is.
	Okay, so I don't get distracted.
	I will minimize the screen and I will talk about the new data.
	So the new data that's out is that the SSRIs appear to be Largely bunk.
	I'm going to just, you know, make sure that I get the right data here.
	I read it before on the show.
	But now I did many, many years ago, The Truth About Mental Illness.
	And so it's been around.
	It's been around for a while, my skepticism about this kind of stuff.
	Alright, so this is antidepressants, right?
	So antidepressants called into question because there's no convincing evidence depression is caused by low serotonin levels.
	So how do you test this? Well, you find people with low serotonin levels and you find out...
	Whether they're depressed and you find people with high serotonin levels and you find if they're depressed.
	If they're depressed, right?
	So this just came out this week.
	Many antidepressants might not be treating the condition because they are being used to correct a cause of depression that does not actually exist.
	New research has suggested that A new review of existing studies concludes that the quote chemical imbalance and quote theory of depression, in particular low levels of serotonin, does not stand up to scrutiny.
	Serotonin is a chemical transmitter that appears to play a role in governing mood and emotions.
	Most antidepressants are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, SSRIs, and were originally said to work by correcting abnormally low serotonin levels.
	However, the umbrella study carried out by researchers at University College London and published in Molecular Psychiatry suggests that depression is not likely caused by a chemical imbalance and calls into question what antidepressants do.
	The UCL team said 85-90% of the public believes that depression is caused by low serotonin or a chemical imbalance.
	However, this does not appear to be the case and patients should be made aware of other options for treating depression.
	Yeah, so, sunlight, I'm not an expert, so this is just my, obviously, opinion and what I've read.
	But yeah, sunlight, exercise, having positive, healthy people in your life, getting good sleep, eating well, getting a medical checkup for various things, not bad.
	And of course, most depression resolves in like 6 to 12 weeks.
	Funnily enough, that seems to be just about the length of time they claim this stuff works as well.
	So, the lead author of the review, Joanna Moncrief, professor of psychiatry at UCL, said, quote, It is always difficult to prove a negative, but I think we can safely say that after a vast amount of research conducted over several decades, there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities, particularly by lower levels or reduced activity of serotonin.
	So...
	So... Ah...
	However, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and patients said patients should continue to take the medication they had been prescribed.
	What a shock.
	What a shock. Professor Alan Young, director of the Center for Effective Disorders at the Institute of Psychiatry, said of the new study, the undiscussed elephant in the room is the good evidence of the efficacy and acceptability of serotonergic antidepressants.
	The use of these medicines is based on clinical trial evidence which informs their use for patients.
	This review does not change that!
	Oh, what they will say in the future about the lives that we lead now.
	Oh, what they will say.
	They will be as kind to us as we are to people who practice barbarity in the past.
	Just horrendous.
	So, assholes are going to be big mad, and they are.
	They are. In New York, some years ago, I did a speech on Freud.
	I won't reproduce it here. I'll put a link to it in the show.
	Remember, fdrpodcast.com.
	Just do a search. Just do a search, and you can find them.
	It's a great mystery, you know.
	Great mystery in the world.
	Since the dawn of civilization, since the dawn of humanity, since the dawn of written language.
	Great mystery in the world.
	The people are depressed, they're anxious.
	They get suicidal, full of rage.
	Crazy! Crazy, crazy.
	The Christians were more right, in my opinion, than the psychiatrists, because the Christians said that madness was a form of demonic possession which meant alienation from God, that you had turned to immorality, that you had been seduced by the devil and controlled by demonic forces which made you crazy!
	But if we look at...
	I mean, if you're a Christian, perhaps you accept that view.
	If we look at it from a philosophical standpoint and we say that craziness results from evil...
	Craziness results from evil.
	This is what happened with Freud.
	Not only was he a drug dealer for his friends who got them hyped up on cocaine and also helped popularize the use of cocaine in Europe through articles and so on.
	But it was one of the great portrayals of human history.
	And I, of course, wore up and down that I would never fall prey to that temptation.
	So, Freud, in the upper class bourgeois, to some degree Jewish society of Vienna, 19th century, there were crazy patients.
	And he tried his sort of talk therapy.
	He tried the dream analysis.
	And... Particularly the women who were crazy.
	And some of them had somaticized, which is when psychological dysfunction manifests in some physical manner.
	You open your eyes, but you can't see.
	You can't feel anything in your arms or whatever it is, right?
	So when he asked them basically what happened in your childhood, the female patients, his female patients, said, Oh, yeah, I was totally raped as said, Oh, yeah, I was totally raped as a kid.
	I was raped endlessly as a kid.
	This was alarming to him.
	Of course, right? And he began to publish on this, and then he received extraordinary blowback, as you could imagine, And then he's like, okay, well, maybe I won't continue down this path.
	I still have this information, though.
	They keep saying that they are raped, sometimes by their fathers.
	The girls were saying raped by fathers, and the boys were saying molested by mothers a lot of times.
	And he said, okay, well, maybe it's not real then.
	Maybe it's not a real thing that's happening.
	It's just a fantasy. So if you want to know where the Oedipus complex comes from and the Electra complex comes from, the Oedipus complex, of course, is the desire for the child to sleep with his mother.
	The Electra complex is the daughter to sleep with her father.
	These were created to cover up sexual crimes against children.
	So, you know, the lid was lifted.
	Now, I believe that if you look at the Christian explanation for craziness, that it is an effect of evil.
	It is an effect of evil.
	If craziness is an effect of evil, that's pretty important, isn't it?
	That's a pretty important relationship to establish.
	I mean, if you don't know that lung cancer is primarily caused by smoking, then you can't fix it, right?
	So society's had this hot potato since the dawn of society, and that hot potato is, where does crazy come from?
	Now, if crazy comes from evil, then there are a lot of evildoers doing enormous harm against children, not just molestation, but other forms of abuse, neglect, of course, physical violence, emotional abuse, and so on.
	So society has this hot potato.
	There's this conveyor belt of people coming into adulthood who are deeply unstable, who are crazy.
	What's going on? Now Freud was really one of the first people to ask, what's going on?
	To actually ask the patients.
	And the fact that the patients haven't been asked, for the most part, is kind of important.
	So the question then is, since these have been going on for decades, These prescriptions and the science doesn't hold up as far as we can tell at the moment.
	Why would people want this so much?
	Why would people want this so much?
	Why would they be...
	Oh, yeah, okay, there's a chemical imbalance.
	Can I get a test for that? Nope!
	No test for it! Okay?
	So if there's no test for the chemical imbalance, how do you know there is one?
	Trust us. Is there a test at least that says that the chemical balance is any kind of better?
	Nope. So, people are desperate for the chemical imbalance theory Because if you're born with diabetes and you need insulin,
	nobody sits there and says, well, the diabetes that you were born with must be the result of child abuse and we need to cover up that child abuse so we'll just pretend something, something, something, right?
	So you have these wounded children fallen off the conveyor belt into adulthood with extraordinary levels of dysfunction and And the people who are there to help them, who are paid to help them, I think, by the state, usually sometimes by individuals, often by insurance companies as well, the people who are there to help them, how much do they want to uncover the evils that go on in society?
	How much do the people who are paid to help crazy people want to uncover the evils that are going on in society?
	Well, I'll tell you, the answer is not very much at all.
	Not very much at all.
	Not very much at all.
	So there's a demand.
	The crazy people need to be dealt with.
	Unhappy people, anxious people, depressed people.
	It's something we've got to help them somehow.
	Now, if the actual way to help them is to uncover the crimes against them as children...
	Well...
	Pretty big contingent in society that doesn't want that to happen.
	You know, if you've got a counterfeiting gang...
	And someone says, hey, I've got a great counterfeit detection machine.
	It costs five bucks. You can put it on every cashier.
	Just scan the counterfeit. Does the counterfeit gang want that?
	Nope. Does the counterfeit gang want that counterfeit detection machine that works beautifully?
	Nope. They don't want that to go around, right?
	So there's a demand.
	There's a demand for a cover-up of the crimes against children.
	There's a big demand for the cover-up of the crimes against children.
	The people who've committed those crimes against children do not want this out in the open.
	Of course not. And it's not just the individuals who've committed crimes against children.
	And I'm not just talking about legal crimes.
	It's the moral crimes as well.
	But it's our entire society.
	Because society gains the allegiance of children By telling children, oh, we care about you so much.
	You know, we put you in these schools because we just want you to be educated.
	And, you know, we make sure you get free health care because we just want you to be healthy.
	And we just, we care about you so much.
	You're the precious... The golden egg future of our entire society, the reason for our being, and they break into Whitney Houston songs, and just society goes on this big rah-rah, sis-boom-bah bullshit parade about its love for its children.
	I mean, I don't know when you guys first heard about the national debt.
	I think I was about maybe 11 or 12 when I really kind of got the national debt.
	Somebody was saying to me, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, you're born like a half a million dollars in debt.
	Because they borrowed against your future tax receipts.
	And I was like, what?
	What are you talking about?
	No. No, you've got to be mistaken.
	You've got to have some bad information, man, because society has told me eternally how much it cares about me and wants me to be happy and wants me to be well-educated and wants me to be healthy.
	There's no way... They could have borrowed a half million dollars against my future tax earnings because that would put me in debt for half of my fucking life.
	Make about a million dollars over the course of your life.
	So that would put me half in slavery.
	There's no way. So, of course, I asked a couple more people.
	Oh, yeah, that's totally a thing.
	So what happens to society if children figure out that the ruling classes, the structures that most surround the kids, what happens to society if kids no longer believe that society...
	Well, I mean, it cares about them as future taxpayers.
	It cares about them as receptacles for propaganda.
	But what happens to our society?
	I mean, it's not just the individual criminals.
	It's the whole structure of society as a whole.
	As I've said this before on the show, I remember being...
	I think I was in grade 7 and I was in a class and the teacher was talking about that, you know, we could look forward to our retirement benefits in, you know, 50 years or whatever, 50 plus years.
	And, you know, half the class nodded and half the class, more the boys really, who could do math better...
	Half the class would laugh at him.
	Just laugh at him. Yeah, right.
	In 50 years, for sure, they'll be on tax benefits.
	Oh, yeah. Really, they're putting him in a lockbox, man.
	I mean, when people figure out, like the Agenda 2030 is, I think, a lot to do with the fact that that's when Social Security and the retirement benefits just run out of money.
	You had your free shit, now the bill comes due.
	The basic principle of demonology is you get your free shit, now the bill comes due.
	And by the time the bill comes due, the free shit doesn't mean that much to you anymore, and the bill is horrendous.
	So the people who avoid doing the deal with the devil are the people who can abstract and protect their future self to the point where they're willing to not succumb to base flesh-formed material greed, but instead will take care of their eternal souls.
	Our capacity for abstraction is our eternal soul.
	So society doesn't want to ask children how you're doing.
	The left certainly doesn't want to ask children how they're doing because the left venerates women and single mothers.
	And of course, this whole theory, oh, masculinity is so toxic, masculinity is just so bad.
	Well, great. Then if that's the theory, right?
	If you say, well, lead in the gasoline and lead in the paint is really bad for IQ, so you get rid of lead in the gasoline and lead in the paint, and IQ should increase.
	And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened.
	So there, look at that. You have a cause and effect, right?
	But if masculinity is so toxic and the patriarchy is so bad, then the children of single mothers should be doing the very best in society as a whole.
	On average, they should just be doing magnificently relative to those poor, poor children who were raised with actual fathers in the household.
	Man, you know, like the kids who grow up with no exposure to lead should be smarter on average than the kids who grow up eating lead.
	Chips off the wall. It gets us close to female immorality, female exploitation, female abuse.
	What's that thing? Whoever rules over you?
	You ever want to find that out?
	Just look at who you can't criticize.
	So, society doesn't want to reveal that it doesn't really care that much about kids.
	In fact, it's happy to exploit them financially, propagandistically, from a voting block standpoint, by appeasing even bad parents.
	And the people who have parented really badly, in a deeply immoral way, They don't want this coming out.
	And the kids themselves, of course, also have great resistance to finding out the truth about their society, their families, their history, their structures, their education, this, that and the other, right?
	Because, you know, if someone does come along, and this is a big, big thing for me, as you guys know, I almost married the wrong woman.
	I was engaged and real close, married the wrong woman.
	And everyone in my life back then who let me sail into this fairly obvious, in hindsight, disaster, and of course it's a lot easier to see from the outside than it is from the inside, So, of all the people who let me sail into this disaster, or towards this cliff edge, not one of them is in my life anymore.
	Because it was a friend of mine's girlfriend who said, you'd think someone engaged would be happier?
	And I was like, just a chance comment.
	By the by, someone saved my life tonight.
	Right? People just let you sail into disaster and then claim that they love you so much.
	So if someone does sit down and say, well, gosh, what happened to you as a child, my friend?
	You're suffering from instability as an adult.
	Let's start at the beginning.
	What happened to you as a child? Now I've done thousands of...
	It's not a theoretical thing for me.
	I mean, I had a theory and I put it out there into the universe.
	And I've had thousands of these conversations now.
	And the pattern holds true 100%.
	That instability in the present is easily and directly traceable to child abuse in the past.
	Now, of course, I'm not saying that every form of instability in the present is caused by child abuse.
	There can, of course, be degenerative disorders.
	There can be brain injuries.
	There can be tumors. I get all of that.
	Not like every single piece of instability is directly traceable to child abuse.
	But it's the first place to look!
	It's the first place you look.
	And you're looking for your wallet.
	Where do you look? You look at the last place you remember having it.
	Or you may look in your common spots or whatever, right?
	It doesn't mean it's going to be there.
	It's the first place you look, right?
	So if someone comes along and says to someone...
	Oh, you feel unstable, you feel unhappy, you feel anxious, you feel depressed or whatever.
	Tell me about what happened to you as a kid.
	How was your childhood? How were you disciplined?
	How were you punished? Were you bullied?
	What was your school like? Were you hit?
	Were you verbally abused?
	Were you molested? Just ask these questions.
	Now, if someone does come along and ask these questions...
	Why de-platforming? Not a huge mystery, right?
	So when someone does come along and ask these questions, it's enormously destabilizing to society and society and the people who do wrong and sometimes the kids themselves when they get to be adults.
	Society as a whole really doesn't want these questions being asked.
	Because that's sacrificing the pleasure of the moment for the soul of the future.
	And we've been taught to be greedy, to be short-term, to grab and grasp and eat.
	I mean, the obesity thing is part of that, right?
	Don't defer gratification.
	Enjoy, eat now! Because we don't have abstractions.
	When we don't have abstractions, when we don't have virtues, all we have are pleasures.
	Pleasures of the flesh.
	Drugs, drinking, promiscuity, eating.
	That's all we have. If we don't have principles, we only have pleasures.
	We're animals, but we can't be animals, so we're just inhuman.
	Someone comes along and says, must have been rough in your childhood, man.
	And Do you know what that person said?
	You know, like one of the first music videos was Bohemian Rhapsody.
	They just dialed every single conceivable video effect they could.
	And one of them is just, you know, the person goes on, is sort of mirrored, goes on forever.
	By the time, let's say, you're 20, you've met thousands of people over the course of your life.
	Certainly hundreds and hundreds of adults, right?
	I mean, there's your parents, your grandparents, there's extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, parents, and so on, great aunts, great uncles.
	There's the teachers that you all have, there's your friends, parents, there's like, if you've got a priest, there's just people all over the place, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of adults, probably closer to about a thousand.
	But let's just say 500, we can be conservative.
	Someone comes along and says, oof, man, what happened to you as a kid?
	It'd be rough. It's not just that person who's finally asking you the most obvious and helpful question, in my view.
	It's all the other people who didn't.
	It wasn't so much that my friend's girlfriend said, hmm, you think someone's gonna be married to be happier, right?
	It wasn't that person in particular that was the shock.
	The shock was realizing what an essential, important, and affectionate question that was, and also realizing that nobody else in my life was asking that question.
	Nobody's asking. How was your childhood?
	So there's a huge demand for an answer to crazy that doesn't involve child abuse, neglect, beatings, verbal abuse, molestation, huge demand.
	And society is this big giant inverted pyramid that rests with a pointy, savage, bloody serrated tip on the denial of child abuse.
	Bandits effects. You've got lots of crazy people.
	Freud touched on it.
	Backed away. Betrayed.
	It's all in your head.
	It's a fantasy that you were molested.
	It's a fantasy. Just making it up.
	It's a wish. It's a desire.
	It's what you want. Imagine that with a rape victim.
	Oh, you just fantasized.
	It's what you want. Oh my God, it's horrendous.
	But, you know, kids don't have any defenders except occasional crazy philosophers.
	So for me, this is my opinion, right?
	I think, just based on the data that I'm reading, I think there's some real strong facts behind it.
	What's my opinion? Is that the pills are there to silence the crimes.
	In my opinion. The pills are there to say, oh, no, no, no, your instability is not the result of evil.
	It's not the result of immorality.
	It's not the result of abuse.
	It's chemical imbalance.
	Now, of course, a lot of this comes from the government funding because the government will pay for it, and a lot of times people will get benefits, additional welfare or social security benefits from Being diagnosed with these issues.
	So the most cost-effective way, in my opinion, the most cost-effective way to deal with instability is to say, is your instability a shadow cast by a bloody statue of immorality?
	Have you been infected?
	Or exposed to evil?
	I think it's a reasonable question to ask.
	Again, it's not a perfect answer.
	It doesn't answer 100% of the cases.
	But again, I think it would be a useful place to start looking.
	But nobody wants to look there.
	Because the only people who benefit from looking there are the victims down the road.
	And the society we could have down the road.
	This is why I wanted to read from my novel, The Future.
	It's the new novel.
	It's my atlas right. Because, okay, what does society look like if we actually deal with child abuse?
	What does society look like if we actually deal with child abuse?
	It's beautiful. It's beautiful.
	I mean, it's...
	There's an old Arthur C. Clarke statement that says, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
	Any sufficiently moral society is indistinguishable from heaven. Any sufficiently moral society is indistinguishable from heaven.
	It's a cover-up of crimes, as has perpetually occurred.
	And even though, from an analogy standpoint, Christianity is bang on, saying that crazy is the result of evil, it abstracts the evil to demonic forces, not to direct parenting or indoctrination or abuse.
	Ah, the devils are out there in the ether.
	Must have written a pentagram somewhere.
	Nope. Four words to save the world.
	Four words to save the world.
	Four words, one question mark.
	Hell, you can throw the inverse question mark at the beginning if you want to go Latino.
	How was your childhood? How was your childhood?
	How was your childhood? How was it?
	What's the good, the bad, the up, the down, the light, the dark, the black, the white?
	How was your childhood? How was your childhood?
	How was it? Tell me the good, the bad, the in-between.
	But see, that's free. That's just a free conversation.
	Does it require any professional expertise to ask your friends?
	How was your childhood?
	I don't think so.
	So what's the demand?
	The demand is for the avoidance of how was your childhood.
	A chemical imbalance!
	Some pills! That way we don't have to ask, how was your childhood?
	I mean, if somebody comes to you with some thyroid condition, you don't say, how was your childhood?
	Oh, you've got a thyroid condition.
	It's a physical thing. We've got to fix it.
	Some guy comes to you with low testosterone.
	You don't say, how was your childhood?
	Although I do have a vague theory, total theory, no science behind it.
	But low testosterone is, in effect, a father absence for boys growing up, which is another reason why the state pushes single motherhood.
	But if somebody comes to you with a genuine measurable deficiency or excess, you have high blood pressure.
	I can measure that. Yep.
	Can we measure improvement?
	Yep. Okay, but you don't say, you might ask the person about stress.
	But if somebody comes to you with a hormonal imbalance that you can measure, both the deficiency or excess and then the repair, you don't just sit there and say, hey, how was your childhood?
	If somebody comes in and they just accidentally buzzsawed their finger off and they've got it in an ice bag next to their celery, you don't sit there and say, how was your childhood?
	No, you just try and stitch that finger back on, right?
	So moving it to a medical model.
	It's a chemical brain imbalance.
	Oh, great. Can I see the test results?
	Nope. Can I trace any improvement?
	Nope. But take these.
	You'll feel better in 6 to 12 weeks or whatever the number is, right?
	Wait a minute. Doesn't most depression resolve on its own within 6 to 12 weeks?
	Can't say. And not that I'm sure he would agree with a lot of what I say, but I did have the author of Anatomy of an Epidemic on the show many years ago.
	It's a very good book, very powerful book.
	Robert Whitaker, I think his name was.
	And Mr.
	Whitaker had a pretty good point.
	He said, you know, when we have genuine cures, things tend to get better, right?
	Things get better. When you get the introduction of antibiotics...
	Problems from infections go down enormously because you've got a cure for an infection called antibiotics, right?
	Antivirals, deals with viruses.
	So when you get a cure, the prevalence of the ailment, I mean, that's how you kind of know you have a cure.
	The prevalence of the ailment goes down.
	And he said, look, since the introduction of the psychotropic drugs, the prevalence of mental illness has skyrocketed.
	That seems important, right?
	But there's such a demand to avoid the how is your childhood question of the kettle of worms or the can of worms or the landmines that opens up in our very fragile social and familial structures.
	Oh, people don't want that, man.
	Take a pill, man.
	That way I don't have to say or ask, how was your childhood?
	All right, so there's my ranty rant.
	And the people... I'm sorry, last thing I'll say, it's okay.
	Let's say you say, okay, well, maybe it's not some chemical imbalance or you, you know...
	Say, okay, well, then why am I unhappy?
	Why am I stressed? Why am I anxious?
	Why am I depressed? Why am I depressed?
	Maybe you're just surrounded by assholes.
	You have APD, Asshole Proximity Disorder.
	Maybe you are an asshole. Maybe you're immoral.
	Maybe you're cruel. Maybe you're selfish.
	Maybe you're mean. Maybe you're destructive.
	Maybe you're hateful of the good.
	I mean, you want to find people who are happy and emulate them to some degree, right?
	It's the principle of being a personal trainer.
	You don't go to the fat guy for advice on how to lose weight.
	Don't come to me for advice on how to keep your hair or your social media platforms.
	Don't come to me. So, it's a basic principle.
	So it may be you're the kind of person who sees another happy person and gets full of rage and wants to tear that person down, in which case, yeah, probably not going to be very happy.
	It's a pretty immoral thing to do.
	See people who are doing better than you and strive to emulate them.
	That's the purpose of envy. The purpose of envy is not to make you hate the good for being the good, but have you emulate the healthy for being the healthy.
	All right, let me just get caught up here.
	Yeah, so the bad people, they want you to look around.
	Then I want you to look around and see where the problem might be.
	Would you consider any reported effectiveness of SSRIs to be strictly placebo then?
	Well, I have read studies that SSRIs don't seem to do much better than placebos.
	Could be. Steph, I have read that the brain physiology of abused children is permanently altered.
	Do you agree? So are you saying that the brain of an abused child would be different than if that child were not abused?
	Well, of course it would be different.
	For sure. Yeah, for sure.
	But so what? You don't know how?
	And there is no template of you in the imaginary other universe where you won't abuse that you can compare to.
	So you just work with what you have to improve as much as humanly possible.
	And there's nothing that says that abuse makes you worse.
	Being abused made me better.
	Made me a better person.
	Do you think the Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire should be basically mandatory when screening patients who complain of depressive symptoms?
	Well, yeah, I mean, I have my issues with the Adverse Childhood Experience questionnaire, but it's not a bad place to start, in my opinion.
	And I know this, I mean, just personal experience, confronting evildoers in my life, the level of rage and hatred and hostility that comes out of that confrontation is a good idea.
	They have unbearable consciences.
	It's a great powder keg in society, which is the conscience of people who've done wrong.
	It's a great powder keg in society, the conscience of people who've done wrong.
	And I mean, if you look at England, right?
	I mean, you look at the immigrant rapes of little British kids.
	It's been going on since the 1970s.
	It was covered up, right? Oh, but they care about the kids.
	Care about the kids. The people who are covering up the Epstein client list.
	Boy, she got a sweet deal today, huh?
	Yep, well, that's what happens if you don't give up the list, right?
	All right. Well, and I did, of course, I did a show, gosh, this has got to be 12 years ago or so, about how you get much greater happiness out of therapy than just about anything else.
	Let's see here.
	I'm in a pickle.
	Thank you.
	My husband's last name is from a previous marriage his mom was in, and the man she married was not his father, but his mother decided to put the man's last name on my husband's birth certificate.
	It's bothering me more now that I'm pregnant, and I don't feel comfortable having a child's last name coming from a man his mother married.
	She's now divorced, but she kept the last name from that man.
	Thought, Steph? Change it if you want.
	Nothing wrong with that. I can certainly see where you're coming from.
	Have you ever struggled with self-pity or arrogance or anxiety?
	Um, nothing major.
	I mean, I think like everyone, these thoughts pass through your head, but nothing.
	To expand on your issues with the Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire, well, I mean, it's gynocentric, right?
	So it talks about, did you ever see the women getting beaten?
	Did you ever see women being abused?
	Your mother being abused? But it doesn't really talk about your father.
	I emailed you a few years back, didn't get much of a response.
	Um... Just, I mean, try again.
	You know, if at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again.
	That's what I was raised with, and if you didn't get a response from me, just try again.
	Steph, since you are still referencing viruses and you're not a virologist, here's a sample to follow explaining the fallacy of virology.
	There are no viruses. I'm pretty sure I've seen them in microscopes, but anyway.
	Hard to tell how much depression is a result of environment, long-term abuse included, and inborn natural causes.
	I know I feel better when circumstances improved.
	Well, we've only talked about mental illness or depression or anxiety with regards to how was your childhood.
	But here's the thing, right?
	So for smarter people, society is a bit of a torture chamber.
	For smarter people, society is a bit of a torture chamber.
	So smarter people can generally see further down the road of consequences.
	And we have a built-in instinct for what is sustainable and what is not.
	It's a silly thing. I threw this in my novel too.
	So when I was a kid, I used to feel along, when I was trying to fall asleep or I was dozing, I would feel along the edge of my sheets.
	And I always have a good instinct when it was about to run out.
	I don't know how or why, but it was always just like, maybe it was something to do with the pressure or the fabric.
	I always had a real good sense of when it was about to run out.
	And I have a whole scene in my novel, I was just listening to it last night, so good, about, you know, the cold, the icy people, right?
	The people who had to deal with winter, we had to be very good at figuring out, or our ancestors had to be very good at figuring out how to get enough food put by to last over the course of the winter.
	So we're very good at sensing the unsustainable and having some sense of When the end of the current system might be coming.
	Right now, the current system is completely unsustainable.
	And everybody knows that.
	And anybody who's got half a brain knows that, right?
	It's completely unsustainable.
	And so, because we're trapped in a system that can't self-correct.
	We're trapped in a system that cannot self-correct.
	It's maddening at times.
	Absolutely maddening.
	See, the free market self-corrects.
	Always. The invisible hand.
	Free market self-corrects.
	Oh, there's too much supply of something?
	Oh, well, that'll drive the price down, and then less of that will be produced.
	Boom! Self-correction. Oh, is there a shortage of something?
	Okay, well, the price will go up.
	That will get people to build more of it or supply more of it, and then the price is going to go up.
	Self-correcting all the time.
	All the time. Self-correcting.
	But status systems cannot self-correct.
	Government education cannot self-correct.
	Government legal systems cannot self-correct.
	Central banking cannot self-correct.
	So society in the past could self-correct in a more voluntary kind of way.
	So, the people who didn't plan for winter, right, enter the grasshopper, the people who didn't plan for winter, maybe the first winter you're like, okay, well, I hope you learned your lesson.
	We're going to give you some food.
	You'll make it through the winter. We'll be a little hungry.
	You'll be a lot hungry, but you'll make it through.
	Self-correction. Punishment for inattentiveness, for laziness, for lack of preparation, lack of planning.
	Punishment. Society could self-correct.
	Market self-corrects.
	Society could self-correct.
	And now we're stuck in this system where money gets printed and people get paid to move around and there's no borders.
	Can't self-correct. And whatever can't self-correct escalates to catastrophe.
	So it's not just, I say, oh, well, you seem kind of nervous.
	It's like, well, I'm...
	What's that old line from the song Demolition Man by the police?
	Strapped to the tracks and the engine coming.
	I think Grace Jones did a cover of it that was really bad.
	Demolition Man, right? Anyway, so, yeah, we're stuck in a system that you can't fix.
	You just gotta watch.
	Except you're not watching, you're in it!
	In the system! I mean, you can't hear people's conversations over the clacks on alarms of fairly imminent doom because the system cannot self-correct.
	I mean, you can say it will self-correct in the exceedingly long term, but that's not what we want, right?
	Have you played pickleball?
	I'm addicted and need help.
	Pickleball is fantastic.
	I would really recommend.
	Particularly, you know, like if you're in your 50s and so on.
	Tennis is a bit heavy on the elbow and shoulders.
	And pickleball is a wonderful game, particularly doubles.
	Yeah, my wife and I play. And it's really, really great.
	All right. Let me just get caught up here.
	You have no accent, I'm just throwing that in.
	Alright, Mr. Mullinex.
	Oh, it reminded me of a woman I asked out at a nightclub.
	I don't think it was a nightclub, I think it was a restaurant.
	Anyway, a really pretty woman.
	I asked her out. And pretended I was more wealthy than I was.
	And we went to the CN Tower for dinner.
	And she ordered like the lobster and all of this kind of cool stuff.
	And I had like a salad because I didn't have enough money for the meal.
	So I had to leave my wallet there, go get money out from the bank and come back later.
	And anyway, during the course of the dinner, I realized why she was so used to all this money.
	I won't give any details out because, you know what, it's not...
	It's not her fault. I'm notorious.
	But she was the daughter of an extraordinarily wealthy family in Canada.
	And anyway, so I never fessed up.
	I never fessed up and said, listen, I'd like to date you, but I can't possibly afford the kind of life that you lead.
	It's not even within a...
	You know, I couldn't, I had to go hungry for a couple of weeks after that meal.
	And yeah, so if you're out there and you wonder why I never really picked up on our relationship, though you called a couple of times, it's because I was totally faking my resources.
	I had a strap on in my wallet.
	All right, so somebody says here, Mr.
	Molyneux, I fell in love with a woman, but do not accept any permanence with her.
	I've got a stack of good reasons to refuse her, and another reason to take her hand and never look back.
	Every day I'm pulled in too. She and I are stuck in my indecisiveness, and each passing week is another I steal from her search for a husband.
	I don't know how long you've been going out, but if you still have doubt after a couple of months, you may not be the person.
	If you want to call in, we can sort of figure this out, right?
	All right. You guys have great comments, great questions.
	Thank you. The opposite of self-correct is self-destruct.
	Yeah, destructive self and others.
	I'm addicted to dancing.
	Oh, I was playing some of the songs that I used to dance to when I was a teenager.
	So from about the age of 15 or 16, I used to go to nightclubs in Toronto.
	Nuts and bolts. Where they really did provoke, I remember this, that they would provoke the R-selected stuff by having horror movies portrayed.
	Probably like scenes from horror movies on the wall, which I guess provoked the R-selected behavior by giving you a sense of danger and doom.
	But... Some songs would come on.
	Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself was great.
	Talking Heads. Watch out!
	You might get what you're after.
	Cool baby and strange but not a stranger.
	Burning Down the House was also fantastic.
	Great song to dance to.
	Just Can't Get Enough.
	I actually saw Depeche Mode a couple of times in concert.
	They were pretty good. Just some great songs.
	Dance songs in the 80s were fantastic.
	All right. Pretending I was more wealthy than I was.
	Chad move. Well, it's not really a Chad move because I ended up with a ridiculously expensive date.
	A fairly funny story. That's another funny story.
	I just thought of it the other day.
	So when I was in theater school, we were doing a play.
	I was in a play, of course. I was in a lot of plays.
	And our music teacher had this...
	This keyboard that was highly programmable and I guess state of the art back then.
	And he kind of wired up to the whole sound system.
	It was a very big theater with a thousand seats or whatever, right?
	That I was in at least place. And so he wrote music for the plays and there was a very sensitive scene that required this very soft piano.
	And so on. And some of the guys who were in my class were very good with keyboards.
	I wasn't. They were very good with keyboards and reprogrammed it so that on one of the dress rehearsals for the play, when this very tender scene was going on and this little plinking drifting piano was supposed to come in, it was a combination of police sirens and dog barks.
	It was really funny.
	I love you so much.
	Woo! I'm glad they didn't do that for the...
	Because it's also tough for the actor, right?
	I mean, what do you do, break character or whatever?
	Anyway, that was pretty funny. All right.
	Steph, do you think parents, even if not abusive, are anyway always to be blamed for a child that commits suicide?
	Well, you know, this is an always kind of thing.
	I wouldn't necessarily say so.
	Maybe the child is in particular chronic pain and so on, right?
	So there could be reasons that would be outside of parenting, so...
	Try not to, you know, when it comes to a free will thing, you're never going to catch me with the always-never stuff.
	When it comes to free will stuff, the always-never would be an indication of determinism, which I'm not a determinist, so I'm the opposite of a determinist, so no, I wouldn't say that at all.
	Somebody says, I'm hoping to bring an ex-girlfriend back in my life that I pushed away.
	What is the best way to atone for the abuse you've inflicted on another person, especially if they don't trust you and rather not talk to you?
	I was quite the manipulative asshole to them in the past.
	Yeah. I mean, I think, I don't know if this is a common thing for men.
	Maybe it happens for women.
	I'm sure it happens for women. Maybe it's more common for men.
	I think every man at one point in his life is going to be desperate for an ex.
	I think at one point, at some point, every man in his life is going to be desperate for an ex.
	And again, maybe this happens. The one that got away, this sort of thing, right?
	If you've hurt someone, trying to rebuild the relationship, if you've been, as you say, a manipulative a-hole, trying to rebuild the relationship is very much swimming against the current.
	It's probably better for you.
	I can't tell you what to do, of course, but I would say if I had to put a bet on it, it's probably better for you to start a new relationship with your reformed personality and perspective rather than try and stitch up an old relationship where the...
	Somebody has neutral trust to begin with you, but this person has massive mistrust.
	And trying to climb up that slippery, greased wall with icicles coming down is probably a bit too much work.
	All right. Somebody says.
	Good now.
	Let's see.
	Yeah, so I mean, the virus thing.
	Yeah, I mean, I've read some stuff about viruses.
	They are there, they aren't there.
	Look, I'm not going to become a virologist.
	I'm just not going to.
	And this is a philosophy show, not a biology show.
	So you need to find people who are into the field of biology, call them up, and get them to spread.
	Honestly, I'm not going to become an expert in viruses.
	I'm just not. And so for every field that you go into, there's a lot of really wild opinions.
	And I have been able to sift some of the wilds and some of the good and some of the bad arguments and opinions in some fields, but that's a big field.
	Steph, could you give me some date ideas?
	Ping them to your nipples with clothespins.
	Oh, sorry. I want something with a good chance of the person actually accepting.
	Before you ask, I don't have that much information about her yet.
	That's what the date is for.
	I would also appreciate ideas of important questions in the first date.
	Yeah, that's a great question.
	So, you have to recognize, of course, that...
	Is this a man?
	I assume this is a man, right? Yeah.
	So, women would like a public place for a first date.
	They would like a place where there's people around, just in case you're crazy or whatever it is, right?
	Women always have this underlying terminate and stay resident program of just like, I could get attacked, I could get kidnapped, I could, right?
	It's just part of the female mindset and for whatever better or for worse.
	Like three quarters of young people in America these days are frightened for their physical security, right?
	Frightened to go out, frightened to walk around.
	I mean, it's really appalling how much social trust has been diminished.
	I mean, for me, from the age of like four or five, I was just roaming the neighborhood.
	I would get on buses, six, seven years old, and six, of course, I was sent to boarding school.
	I used to go on planes to visit my father when I was six, to Africa.
	You know, I just didn't have any of this bubble wrap, hover-bot stuff.
	But then, of course, social trust was much higher then for various reasons we know about in this show.
	So, just recognize that women feel pretty nervous these days.
	Have a nice public place.
	Have a place where you can have a conversation.
	And have a place where the woman can feel pampered.
	Pampered is one of these words that just is like catnip or ambrosia for women.
	For men, being pampered is, I don't know, someone brings you a sandwich when you're watching sports.
	But for a woman to feel like someone's serving her, for a woman to feel precious, for a woman to feel treasured, you know, open the door for her in the car or, you know, meet her there.
	She probably doesn't want to get into a car with you on the first date, meet her there, or you can offer to pick her up, but, you know, and then hold out the chair while she goes to sit and, you know, make her feel treasured and wonderful and all of that.
	And as far as important questions, yeah, I mean, whatever she did, how did you get into doing whatever you do?
	What's your longest friendship and what do you think maintains it?
	That's important, right? Figure out what her values are and so on.
	If she's good-natured, then you can talk about things that were embarrassing to get a sense of how she handles shame or embarrassment or criticism and so on.
	You can say, you know, where would you most like to travel if you could just snap your fingers and be there?
	Where would you most like to live if you could snap your fingers and be there?
	And, you know, the million dollars, what would you do?
	Just get a sense of playfulness and you're looking to expand her possibilities so you want to sort of measure where her possibilities could go if she had a blank check, so to speak.
	And, you know, at the end of your life, when you look back, how will you measure your success, right?
	Because we kind of do this as we go along, how you measure your success.
	So, you know, you really want to try and get a sense of how curious, how adventurous, how playful, and not all of these things are not necessarily got to be maximum, but, you know, just get a sense...
	Do you want kids?
	Would you raise your children differently from how you were raised and why?
	Your best memory from childhood?
	Your worst memory from childhood? You know, all of these kinds of things can be really interesting to get to know someone.
	And just go with that.
	All right. Steph, I'm trying to start up a YouTube channel focusing on government, peaceful parenting, and self-knowledge for men.
	However, I'm struggling with gaining traction.
	Would you mind sharing your strategies when you started?
	I would greatly appreciate it. Yeah, so 80% of your time is not creating content when you're starting out.
	80% of your time is spent...
	Marketing. This is just a reality of being an entrepreneur, particularly, and this was maybe even higher now.
	This is back when the field was way less crowded because I started publishing.
	As soon as YouTube started, I started publishing back in 2006.
	So you can go to, I mean, this is what I did back in the day.
	You would go to forums that have like-minded things, like-minded ideas, and you'd post about your shows.
	And you would try and get on shows slightly bigger than you are.
	And you would also try and get people to come on your show.
	There are always authors with a new book who are kind of obscure who want to get on and talk about their books or whatever it is that they're doing.
	So you want to cross-pollinate with other people's channels and all of that.
	So yeah, you've got to just get your material in front of other people's eyes and hopefully it will just go from there.
	But yeah, everybody wants to create.
	Nobody wants to promote. But creation without promotion is pretty, pretty tough.
	Yeah. I always fell for the return of the exes.
	Oh, yeah. Yeah.
	Have you ever had that thing? I've heard these stories.
	I never got back together with an ex, but I've heard these...
	Oh, no, I did once. I did once.
	But I've heard these stories which is like, oh, I'm so desperate to get back with my ex and I miss her so much.
	I love her so much. And then like three days after you get back together where it's like, oh, right.
	This is why we broke up.
	I remember now.
	and all of that, right?
	Minigolf Outdoors, Public Easy?
	Oh, I like mini golf, but only because I'm a parent.
	A trick to women, be nice without compromising your integrity.
	Yeah, so be relentlessly curious with other people and then find out if that curiosity comes boomeranging back to you, right?
	If the curiosity comes boomeranging back...
	That's great. You have mutual interest.
	But just keep asking.
	And if you're with someone, you know, you've got a two-hour date or whatever.
	I think dinner is nice.
	Walks in a public place can be nice.
	Although walks a bit odd because you're not facing each other.
	You're kind of side by side. But just keep asking questions and a decent, nice person will at some point start asking you questions back, right?
	Enough about me, right? And you really want to find out if that person is going to ask you questions back or not.
	If they just want to talk about themselves, then you're probably with somebody who's kind of self-absorbed and it's probably going to be kind of a Exhausting person to date.
	Not hugely recommended, to put it mildly.
	All right. Let's mute that cuff there.
	You know, most people go through life...
	Barely anybody asks them anything.
	Important, right?
	And so we get stuck in this skull prison of just thinking about ourselves, thinking about our lives, thinking about society, thinking about the world.
	And we never get to discharge it in conversation because most conversations stay at this relentless surface level of nonsense.
	And so if you are somebody who is genuinely curious about people, and I think people are fascinating, and...
	They really do want to talk about themselves, unless they have no inner monologue or inner thoughts.
	And some people don't. Some people don't have inner thoughts, inner monologues, inner arguments.
	They're not ecosystem-enabled, so to speak.
	That's probably not great to date with, I think.
	All right. Is the increasing number of depressed people mainly the result of increasing abuse cases, or the level of abuse is stable, but we have access to more data?
	I don't know. I don't know.
	That would be a question for researchers, not talking heads.
	I struggle articulating my emotions and feelings on past events in my personal history during therapy.
	How do I improve this skill?
	Well, this is the great challenge of self-censorship.
	It's the great challenge of self-censorship.
	If you are a gatekeeper to yourself and ideas, thoughts, and impulses bubble up and you attempt to judge their effects on others, whether others will perceive your spontaneous self-expression as good or bad, plus or minus, positive or negative,
	you know, yay or horror or whatever, if your spontaneous self-expression Communication has to go through a series of almost bureaucratic rubber stamps.
	You can never really be close to anyone.
	You have to have the capacity to just spontaneously express yourself.
	Without judging everything that you say, because the judgment is trying to live the relationship for the other person.
	When you judge yourself and say, well, I can't say this because it will be bad, or other people will think it's bad, or other people will get mad at me or dislike me, then you're living the other person's relationship for them.
	You're crowding them out by trying to play both sides of the tennis court, right?
	And if you are trying to play both sides of the tennis court, there's no room for anyone else to play.
	So don't judge how other people are going to receive you because then you can't be in a relationship with them as you're playing both sides of the tennis court.
	Spontaneously express what's on your mind and to be honest you can say, I feel nervous saying this because it's kind of crazy but here's what I'm thinking and so on, right?
	One of the reasons that I think what I do has connected with so many people is because I'm speaking very deeply from the heart and from the mind and And that's where we kind of live as a whole.
	And the deeper you go and the more honest you are, the more you will connect with other people.
	The more you judge yourself and say, well, I can't say this.
	Oh, I shouldn't say that. Oh, that joke is no good.
	Oh, I can't. You know, and this political correctness is a way of just destroying intimacy because it has everybody double-checking everything they say.
	And, you know, can I hit post?
	Am I going to get deplatformed right now?
	Once the band-aid's off, the band-aid's off and all that.
	But... All of this, everything which interferes with spontaneous communication, spontaneous self-expression, is a way of just isolating people.
	Isolated people are very easy to control.
	They're very easy to bully. And the more you get isolated, the easier you are to push around.
	And so when you look at all of the impediments, oh, you can't say this, or you've got to use that pronoun, or you can't deadname it.
	I understand there's a politeness element to all of this, but It really does.
	Everybody then has to filter everything so much you can't get any spontaneous connection or communication which diminishes, if not destroys our capacity for love.
	So just stop judging everything that you say.
	And if somebody is, quote, appalled by something you say, well, then they can either say that and you can have a conversation about it or they can just condemn you, in which case you just dodged a bullet, right?
	Oh boy, there's so much I want to know about this girl.
	Anything I shouldn't ask in the first date.
	Anything I shouldn't ask.
	Well, don't ask for sex, right?
	And don't ask her to pay the bill.
	And anything I shouldn't ask in the first date.
	Well, enthusiasm is...
	Excess enthusiasm is a form of immaturity.
	Now, I'm very passionate about things.
	I'm very positive about things, very keen on things.
	So don't be overexcited to have another date.
	Obviously, if you like the girl and you want to ask her out or try and figure out the next day.
	But if you're too panty, too thirsty...
	Then the woman processes this as, look, your job is not to pursue me.
	Your job is not to have me, to get me.
	Your job is not to stare at me.
	Your job is to love me, go out into the world, get resources so we can raise kids.
	So if you focus, and this is the sort of myth of this giant romantic love, which, you know, romantic love is always associated with death.
	Always associated with death in a lot of movies, right?
	Now, I'm not talking about the modern...
	Brain chewing gum rom-coms and all of that.
	But if you think about, you know, Sorrows of Young Werther, you think about Romeo and Juliet, you think about lots of love stories that are associated with death.
	Why? Because the passion of romantic love is when two people are facing each other and just falling into each other.
	It's called fusion, right? Now, it's usually based upon pathology, it's usually based upon looks, and it doesn't serve the purpose of romantic love.
	The purpose of romantic love is the having and raising of children, which means a woman stays home in general, it can be other people, but certainly during the best feeding phase.
	A woman stays home, raises the kids, a man goes out, right, and gets resources so the family can flourish.
	So if you're just staring at her and focused on her, rather than, we'd be a great partnership.
	I'm not saying you say this on the first date, but at some point you have to sit and think, would we be a great partnership in the raising of children?
	Would we be a great mom and dad together?
	Would we have really good skills and enthusiasms for raising kids together?
	Okay, well that is romantic.
	That's the purpose of romantic love.
	So if you're just like, I dream of you, I love you, I think of you, and only you, and it's like, the woman is like, ooh, this guy's more of a gonna sit home and stare at me while I sleep rather than go out and get some money so that we can raise kids.
	So don't focus too much on just her, her, her, right?
	Because... All right.
	Do not tell your feelings to anyone that has not earned your trust.
	Yeah, this guy on a platform was telling me, oh, you should do a show about all of your failures and fears and this and that and the other.
	I'm like, I mean, not that there's many, really, but no, I'm not handing out all of the vulnerabilities to people I don't even know.
	That's something for the people in my life I trust, right?
	All right. Yeah.
	Make her feel good about herself in your presence.
	Yeah, and then again, see if it comes back, right?
	See if it comes back. The fusion can get dangerous obsession to the point of death.
	Yes, so the purpose of romantic love is the forging of the next generation and the stability and pair bonding that's necessary for a stable next generation.
	But if you simply focus on the woman to the exclusion of practical matters in life, then what you're generally doing is you're attempting to solve early abandonment issues by fusion with a woman.
	And you will drive her away.
	Thus, Simon the Boxer recreating your early abandonment issues.
	Romantic love is a man's reward for serving others.
	That's an interesting way to put it.
	And this is why you can't be in love if you still have unprocessed trauma or neglect from your childhood.
	You just can't be in love because you're just too busy trying to patch things up.
	You know, you can't play tennis while you're bleeding significantly, right?
	You can't because you just bleed out, right?
	So you've got to tend your wounds and then you can get into the sport.
	I think that's the way it should go.
	Alright, any last comments and questions?
	We have just another few minutes.
	What does it mean to process trauma in your childhood?
	To not lie about the moral nature of your childhood?
	If people harmed you, And don't apologize, and minimize, and blame you, and escalate if you try to get them to confess their wrongs, their sins, their crimes, then bringing the moral reality to what happened to you as a child, that you were hurt by cruel people, if this is what happened, you were hurt by cruel people who refuse to make amends.
	And then if you have any sense of pride, do you want to be around people who hurt you when you were a vulnerable, delicate, and helpless child and refused to make any kind of amends?
	So processing trauma is simply telling the moral truth honestly and openly about your childhood and then taking the appropriate actions based upon the responses of others.
	I wonder if there's a couple of other places where people might be asking questions.
	What did I do? What did I just do?
	I went to the wrong place. All right.
	Well, you know, we don't have to go to the full hour and a half.
	It's not absolutely essential, but one of my good friends here is typing...
	Chapter 1? Chapter 2?
	Oh, you know what? Let's...
	Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do.
	We have to go to the end. All right, so I'll go to the end here, and I will take my little bit of text here.
	So good. So good.
	I mean, I love the book. I love the book so much, and I hope that you like it too.
	All right. Oh, yeah, baby.
	So this is the hero meeting someone who's not quite a villain.
	So there's this group in the country, there's a little bit of a group in the wilderness, and then this group in a modern city.
	And there's a confrontation for reasons that are really clear in the book.
	And I like this, when he's describing why they live the way they do, why they're so harsh on their kids, why they're so harsh on all of that.
	And he said, he's talking about why they don't join the city, why they don't join civilization.
	And he's got a bit of an accent, so I'll just throw that in.
	He says, an ancient Rome, that's why I'm called this, his name is Roman, the city went from millions of inhabitants, Down to a few thousand in a few months.
	Where did they go?
	They were all raised in cities.
	They expected running water in every building.
	No predators, easy food, arguments, debates, literature, and slaves and...
	politics.
	They got water down to the market and sell words for foods.
	You ever try talking a dead tree into giving you fruit?
	That's how insane it looks to us.
	And all these pipes and aqueducts and slaves and swords that the city Romans could not see were all keeping them afloat in a mad dream.
	And then it all ended, one day, as it always does.
	And there was no food in the market and no water in the taps.
	And what did they do?
	Well, they sat on their arses, most of them, and waited for help to arrive.
	And they were raped or killed or enslaved.
	And as the word of this began to spread, people grabbed half a loaf of bread and ran out of the city into the woods.
	He laughed. Our kids would know what to do.
	They wouldn't even eat half a loaf of bread.
	So these Romans, these soft and stupid city folk, they try to plant themselves like seeds in the land.
	There's no point planting a fruit tree when you're already hungry.
	Maybe they went to farmers and begged for food, but the farmers didn't need them.
	They already had all the labor they needed.
	And the soft-handed city idiots knew nothing about farming.
	They had no muscles or calluses or discipline.
	So what happened to them?
	They were barely worth anything as slaves.
	They were just useless eaters.
	They didn't breathe to feed their muscles like you're supposed to, but to feed their words, which were useless to everyone now.
	Millions of them. Where did they go?
	What happened to them?
	We can imagine.
	It doesn't really matter. We will never really know.
	But we know for real, in a way.
	They just broke down and died.
	And you know what they died saying?
	I guarantee you that they died saying that they wished their own damn parents had prepared them for life outside the dying city.
	They died cursing their kin for keeping them soft and useless and parasitical and predatory and political.
	They died because their parents never made them work an honest day in their life.
	So their hands were too soft or anything useful, and their paws bled, and they were cast into the wilderness and eaten by dogs, half alive.
	Roman laughed bitterly.
	They were raised to be kings and senators and sophists, and I couldn't even raise their hands to ward off the dogs that ate them.
	Fought in the road, Mr.
	David. One way is sustainable.
	One is not.
	You are preparing your children for a life that will not last.
	Civilization is a drug that destroys.
	You forgot your gods.
	You forgot your devils.
	So, yeah, that's a little speech from the book.
	Oh, it's so good.
	It's so good. So, yeah, I hope that you will check out the book.
	It's available for subscribers at freedomain.locals.com.
	You can get e-book, you can get audio book, and all of that.
	And... It's some of the best writing I've ever done, and I'm just thrilled with it as a whole, and the feedback has been fantastic and all of that.
	So thanks everyone so much.
	Have yourselves a wonderful evening.
	We will talk to you tomorrow, Wednesday Night Live, 7 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time. And lots of love from up here.

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