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Sept. 9, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:28:33

Wednesday Night Live 7 Sep 2022

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Time	Text
	Alrighty, righty, righty.
	Alrighty. Alrighty.
	Yes, it's me.
	It is the 7th of September 2022, and I hope you're having a great week.
	I hope that you are enjoying the view from the elevated heights of philosophy as the Titanic of the West.
	It slips underwater, what's the mean?
	It's not that funny, but what's the difference between California and the Titanic?
	Well, when the Titanic went down, it still had its lights on.
	It's funny because, of course, I did this Sunset in the Golden State documentary some years ago about the inevitable path of California based on a variety of reasons.
	And it's... I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged much more in the fiction section rather than the documentary section, soon to be the history section.
	So I did enjoy that aspect of...
	It was fun when it was more fantastical rather than more of a...
	When it was less of a lived experience, I guess you could say.
	It was slightly more enjoyable.
	But we make do with what the world provides and we expand our wisdom thereby.
	So... Try again one more time.
	Is tolerance a virtue?
	Okay, so is tolerance a virtue?
	God, no. No, tolerance is the opposite of a virtue.
	Tolerance is a verbal way to disarm the city so that you can be invaded, the city being the self, the identity, the virtue, the integrity, and so on.
	Tolerance is the plea put forward by people who want to ship their Trojan horses in through your moral and intellectual defenses so they can pillage you from the inside out.
	Tolerance is a monstrous injustice.
	And, of course, the people that you should most want to tolerate are the intolerant.
	Tolerating tolerant people is not a big deal.
	So, it's a lie.
	Because In society, the intolerant are the people you have to have the most tolerance for, the bigoted and so on, right?
	And yet society has absolutely no tolerance for the intolerant.
	And so what happens is, this is the general pattern of the way these things play out.
	So if someone comes into your life, it could be personally or through the media or something like that.
	So if someone comes into your life... And they propose something that goes against any rational, moral, or decent standards that you have.
	And you set up a resistance to this.
	You say, no, I don't want to.
	No, that's bad.
	No, that's wrong. No, I don't want to have anything to do with that.
	And what are you castigated for?
	What or what are you attacked for?
	Well, it's always one and the same thing.
	You are attacked for being intolerant.
	You are attacked for being judgmental.
	You are attacked for not having sympathy, for not recognizing the plight of the person who's asking you, attacked for being uncompassionate, cold-hearted, No, it's a test. It's like a vampire test.
	So, you know the way vampires are, right?
	They've got to do this. They've got to knock to get in.
	You have to invite them in. Vampires can't come in, according to the myth.
	Vampires can't come in without you inviting them in.
	So, you have to participate in sin.
	You have to participate in your own self-destruction.
	Like all the people over in Europe...
	Oh my God!
	Our electricity bills are so high!
	Really? What do you think the price is for supporting and cheering on war?
	Do you think that forever and ever and ever, amen, you just get to run along like a bunch of stapled together, ass-eating lemmings?
	Doing whatever the media tells you to, cheering for whoever they portray as the good and cursing whoever they portray as the evil, with no consequences whatsoever.
	God! We lost so much with the fall of Christianity because the wages of sin is death.
	You all wanted your green policies and you all wanted to worship at the feet of mentally ill half-autistic teenagers.
	Oh, we got a wind power, solar power, that's how we're going to do it!
	So you shattered all your nuclear plants, pulled back on all the coal-fired plants, didn't drill for your own oil or natural gas.
	When I was a kid growing up in England, the sea around England was black with oil.
	So you wanted to get away from all that dirty energy, which is a total lie.
	You didn't get away from the dirty energy.
	You just shipped it east.
	You just had China do it.
	You had India do it.
	You had Russia do it for you.
	So you could feel like, oh, we're just so squeaky clean and green.
	I can't believe that countries have these dirty sources of power.
	Let them eat cake.
	Let them eat brioche. So in order to parade yourself around us, Shiny, virtuous, eco-warriors of carbon reduction.
	You say, but I'm not going to do that here.
	I'm not going to do that here.
	Ah, let Russia do it.
	Russia's going to do it. I know you've seen this video, right?
	Trump in 2018, I think it was, came along and said to all the European leaders, you guys are way too dependent on Russian oil and Russian gas.
	And Russian power. That's a big trap, right?
	And of course, this orange peasant of foolishness.
	We don't need any of this foolish reality coming to us.
	But you see, in order to actually produce the power that you consume...
	Now, listen, I'd have had more respect for Europeans...
	If they had said voluntarily, if they're on a court, we're going to cut our energy consumption by 50%, but they didn't do any of that.
	It's like the people who want social spending on every course known to man and God and devil.
	Actually, I'll take God out of it.
	You want spending on every social course known to man and devil.
	So what do they do?
	Well, they don't want to raise the taxes to pay for these things because then it's clearly evident that they're not being solved.
	So they want to create magic money through printing and borrowing and debt and they want to enslave the next generation of what is the U.S. national debt now north of $30 trillion because, you know, $31 trillion would be crazy!
	So people who want to do good without making sacrifices are just sacrificing other people through the mechanism of state power.
	People who want to do good without making sacrifices are just sacrificing other people.
	So the Europeans, the dirty seekers, they outsourced, shipped off The energy production.
	Because they wanted to feel so green and so pure and so clean and so superior to those dirty countries.
	A bunch of coolies.
	Ah, so dirty. We are clean.
	We are squeaky clean.
	And they felt real good about that.
	And they just offshored all of their energy production to Russia, other countries.
	We'll talk about Russia. And then they broke their promises to Russia.
	Russia said, okay, gonna give up Eastern Europe, but you can't have NATO on our doorstep.
	You can never have NATO on our doorstep.
	That's just a fact.
	In the same way that America would not allow Russia to put missiles into Mexico, or, of course, Cuba, for that matter, as in 1962.
	Did one job!
	One job! Don't have countries proximate to Russia join NATO, which you promised.
	Which you promised. And then Ukraine joined NATO. And war broke out.
	And the mainstream media just led you along by the nose.
	Here's to hate. Here's who to hate.
	Here's who to love. You ran along with that.
	And now you're like, whoa, man.
	My energy bills are quite high now, aren't they?
	It is a very high bill for me, n'est-ce pas?
	I shouldn't laugh, but oh my God.
	It's a grim comedy.
	It's a truly grim comedy.
	The darkest of dark comedies.
	Maybe you can burn the Ukrainian flags that you got and waved out your window.
	You can burn those for heat.
	But did you ever think...
	I mean, this is the wild thing.
	I grew up with the wages of sin is death.
	Which you don't wish on anyone.
	You don't wish the death on anyone.
	In the same way that you don't wish that your uncle who smoked like a chimney for 40 years gets lung cancer.
	You don't wish for him to get lung cancer, but he probably will.
	You don't wish for him to get emphysema, but he probably will.
	You don't wish for him to die of smoking, but he probably will.
	The prediction is not what you want.
	The prediction is so he won't smoke like a chimney.
	But if he chooses to, well, the wages of ignorance is what?
	You think you can walk on air and you step off a building?
	You're some post-modernist Cartesian demon theorist.
	Oh, it's just a simulation. I'm going to hack the simulation so I don't need to eat.
	I mean, if you're an average person, you can't eat, your libby lasts for two weeks.
	If you're an American, you've got maybe 16 or 17 weeks.
	The wages of ignoring reality is death.
	We used to know this. We used to know this.
	The wages of sin is death. And the sin in philosophy is false morals, creating general rules with exception for you.
	And of course, people supported the deplatforming of everyone who was going to warn them of this.
	Everyone who did warn them of this is deplatformed.
	And you let your free speech defenders get mowed down by the masticating mob.
	All your sentinels, all your alarm system, all your tripwires for invaders And dangerous.
	We don't need those.
	Because what you do with the virtue of tolerance is you label the people you don't like as intolerant.
	Now, anybody with half a brain would say, wow, you know, if somebody's intolerant, you know what we need?
	That's what I really do need.
	The virtue called tolerance.
	when somebody is teeth-grittingly saying something that really upsets and offends me, that's when I really need the virtue of tolerance.
	You don't need the virtue called dieting when there's no food.
	Thank you.
	You don't need the virtue called avoiding lust if you're on a desert island and don't find elephant seals particularly attractive because you're not a sea-based chubby chaser.
	You need the virtue when the temptation is the opposite.
	If you've never smoked, it's not that hard to not smoke.
	In fact, it would be pretty disgusting to smoke.
	But if you've been a smoker for 10 years, then it's pretty hard to quit.
	If the smoker comes at you and says, oh, I haven't smoked all week.
	You're like, oh, good for you.
	Good for you. Well done. Wow.
	Good job. Keep it up. If somebody who's never smoked comes out and says, I haven't smoked for a week, you say, yeah, I know, because you're not a smoker.
	The virtue is needed when the temptation is the opposite.
	This was all common knowledge all throughout Christendom pre- and post-Reformation.
	In fact, the argument is that you use the temptations to propel yourself further towards virtue.
	Are you tempted by lust?
	Become even more chaste.
	Are you tempted by gluttony?
	Eat even less. Turn the temptations of the devils into virtues in the service of our Lord.
	And your own soul and your future as an inhabitant of 665 Heaven's Gate East.
	You don't want to be in the next one.
	So what you do is you promote tolerance as a virtue.
	And then, oh, because we're post-Christian, most of us, most of the world, there is no sacrifice that it is demanded of you that it is at all tough, at all tough.
	Oh, the media are saying that the Russians are bad and the Ukrainians are noble and heroic and virtuous, as of battalion included, apparently.
	And so you go along with the flow.
	You go along with the herd.
	And you put the flag on your bio and you repost things and the ghost of Kiev shot down 300 fighter planes with rubber bands and spit like an airborne MacGyver.
	Just going along with the flow.
	These people are really bad.
	These people, though, are really good.
	So cheer the good people and curse at the bad people.
	Meh, meh, meh.
	These people good, these people blah, blah, blah.
	God, did you not think there was going to be a price for giving up your own conscience to external manipulations, to having absolutely no sense of good and evil outside of what you're told to believe?
	Giving up your sovereign consciousness, your capacity to reason, to analyze, to think.
	You give it all up!
	To be dragged along like the tail of a kite into hell itself.
	Don't think. Don't look for nuance.
	Don't ever try to understand the other person's point of view.
	Just be told who's an enemy.
	And then you can just direct your two minutes or two years or two decades or 200 years of hatred directly at them.
	Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
	You're told who to love.
	You're told who to hate.
	You're emptied out.
	Emptied out. You're soulless.
	You're a robot, an NPC, a programmed thing, the plaything of the powers that be.
	Well, you must love these people and you must hate these people.
	Yeah, because that's never worked out bad in history before, has it?
	Ever! Ever! So tolerance is put forward as a virtue.
	And as I said, anybody with half a brain would know That you only need the virtue when then temptation is the opposite.
	You only get a virtue called not smoking if you really, really, really want to smoke.
	So, tolerance put forward as a virtue.
	Which means that people should be the most tolerant of the most intolerant.
	Because you don't need to be tolerant of the tolerant.
	If you love modern art, you really need to fight against the same people who love the same modern art.
	No, you don't. Because they already agree with you.
	So tolerance is a virtue that should be most applied to the intolerant.
	And tolerance is called free speech.
	That you tolerate, you don't have to approve of, but you tolerate the expressions of arguments and ideas and perspectives that you just freaking hate.
	You just really, really hate them.
	And there's perspectives I hate, there's perspectives you hate.
	I'm in the category of perspectives that some people hate and other people are in the categories of perspectives that I hate.
	So tolerance, you see, is the foundation of free speech.
	And as tolerance has been endlessly promoted as a virtue, do we see free speech either A, increasing, or B, decreasing, evaporating, vanishing?
	The greatest achievement of the past few hundred years, the most hard-fought-for, hard-won achievement of the past few hundred years, and it's slipping away.
	More than half gone.
	More than half gone.
	And why? Well, this person is intolerant, they say.
	This person is bigoted, this person is whatever, right?
	Misogynist, a phobic of some kind.
	Okay? But if tolerance is a virtue, it should apply the most to those you perceive to be intolerant, but it never does.
	See, tolerance means obedient.
	It's all it means. It means that you are easily programmed, have no thoughts of your own, no arguments of your own, and have been primed to react with fear and hostility to anything that goes against what you've been told.
	Because the people who cry out the most for tolerance are often the most hate-filled, censorious assholes on the planet.
	And the mechanics are quite simple.
	Program people with the idea that tolerance is the greatest virtue and then tell them that they are free to hate and silence and attack, sometimes physically, anybody who's labeled as intolerant.
	That's how it works.
	You, all wonderful sheep-like people, you're tolerant.
	Or as it's pronounced in the modern newspeak, tolerant!
	Tolerant! You're all tolerant.
	You all get this wonderful, oh, you're so tolerant.
	You're so nice, so tolerant.
	You have no standards, no values, no truth, nothing to defend.
	And where the conscience is carved out, hatred takes its place.
	Or self-hatred for letting other people scoop out your conscience and replace it with programming.
	So you give everyone this feel-good drug.
	This feel-good drug.
	Called, oh, you guys are so tolerant.
	You're so nice. You're so thoughtful.
	You're so generous. You're so compassionate.
	You care about the environment.
	And you care about this. And you care about that.
	And you care about the other.
	And you care about the vulnerable.
	Let me exclude you. You're so tolerant.
	You're so nice. And people get addicted to that.
	Because being called nice means you don't have any Abilities or actions that interfere with the expansion of unjust power.
	That's what being nice means. You're coming along.
	That's what nice means.
	Inoffensive. Unproblematic.
	Easy to rule. Hollowed out.
	Easily programmed.
	So tolerant. And then, because people don't like themselves when they give up their judgment, because they're giving up what is most human about them, that self-hatred charges up.
	There's a lot of potential energy there.
	Self-hatred charges up.
	Because these people wander through life, complying and obeying, and then wonder why they can't find love, can't find happiness.
	Facefuls of psychotropics and they can't find joy.
	Of course you can't find love.
	Because you're not there.
	It's like you knock on a door, right?
	Go up to a door. Nobody answers.
	Open the door. Hello?
	Hello? Listen, I was told there was a house party here.
	Is this where the house party is?
	It's empty. Nothing there.
	Nobody there. Dark.
	How's the house party for you?
	Well, it's a sad, lonely, pitiful affair if you stay.
	Woo woo! Yay!
	I'm jumping into the pool with my pants on because I'm a rebel.
	Right? That's sad. That's the saddest party.
	You go someplace, there's nobody there.
	Looking for love or looking to love someone who's been programmed with a slave vice called tolerance is like trying to have a house party in an empty house.
	There's nobody there. You go to a restaurant.
	Go to a restaurant in the middle of the night when it's shut down.
	Maybe they left the door unlocked, right?
	You go in there and you're hungry.
	You sit down at a table in the dark.
	You grab a menu and just go and sit down.
	Hungry. So hungry. Hello?
	Yeah. Hello?
	Anybody here? I'm hungry. I'd like to order.
	Anybody? Hello? Are you going to get any food from an empty restaurant?
	Are you going to get any parties from an empty house?
	No. Are you going to get any happiness or joy from an empty person?
	No, you are not.
	And that tension.
	I'm doing everything right!
	Why is nothing working?
	Like the people with their student loans.
	I did everything right.
	I did what everyone told me to do.
	It's not working out.
	Where's my reward for obedience?
	Do you not understand how the devil works?
	Do you not understand how the devil works?
	The devil promises you bliss and delivers hell.
	He promises you the Philharmonic and delivers country rap.
	The devil will always tell you, well, if you surrender your soul, you'll get all these benefits.
	And, you know, for a little while you do, of course.
	You do. You can go to real parties.
	You can have sex in university.
	You can slide together with everyone else who's condemning the thinker, the person who's not tolerant.
	Not tolerant, don't you know?
	Bad, bad person.
	And, yeah, conformity has its pleasures.
	I mean, it wouldn't be a sin if it didn't have its pleasures.
	Nobody has to...
	Nobody's too tempted by the activity of shredding their knuckles against a cheese shredder.
	But there's real pleasures.
	And where do you end up?
	Well, I did everything right. Yeah, and you got a lot of pleasure thereby.
	And the price for going along, the price for not thinking for yourself, the price for being a herd animal is to not be...
	A soulful thinker.
	And so you're given the steady, drip-drip, intravenous, happy, joy-joy, numbing drug calls.
	But you're really tolerant.
	You're really open-minded. You really thought.
	You're really liberal. You're tolerant.
	So tolerant. I was reading the story about Some socialist organization where the guy in charge would sit down with these young girls.
	He was much older. He'd sit down with these young girls and say, you know, I'm really interested in spanking.
	You know, the phenomenon, the legalities.
	And then he would go on, well, you know, actually it's kind of a personal thing.
	And I'm really into spanking.
	And, you know, I really get off on spanking.
	You know, all these kinds of things, right?
	And I won't get into the literal hell that it all descended into, but...
	The women were all like, well, you know, I don't want to be intolerant.
	I mean, it's not my thing.
	If he really wants to talk about this, I guess it's okay.
	But, you know, I didn't want to shame him for his kink.
	I didn't want to, you know. You know, it's just how people talk.
	No, it's not. It's not how people talk.
	People shouldn't be telling you they're kinks.
	They should be getting therapy.
	Macy Gray. But you see, they didn't want to be perceived as intolerant.
	In other words, they didn't want to say, listen, this is a working relationship.
	Do not bring this sex talk to this relationship.
	Like, what are you doing?
	If we were lovers, I wouldn't pull a spreadsheet out while we were in bed together.
	So don't tell me you're weird kinks in a working relationship.
	Like, that's so unhealthy.
	Because, see, they don't want to shame.
	They don't want to be intolerant.
	They don't want to have any judgment.
	They don't want to have any standards. They don't want to have any boundaries.
	Any morals, really.
	It's got to be tolerant. And people don't tell you That the virtue called tolerance is only achieved when you're face-to-face with the intolerant, and if you attack the intolerant, you have failed the virtue of tolerance, and you're a bad person, worse than the intolerant, who at least is not attacking you.
	They don't tell you that.
	What they tell you, of course, is, oh, yeah, you all are just wonderful tolerant people.
	But that guy, oh, he's intolerant.
	He's judgmental.
	He's bigoted. And then, of course, in the Christian tradition, you'd be like, well, that's the person I've got to be the most loving and tolerant towards, because that's the person who tempts me the most to do the opposite and to be attacking and censorious.
	So I've got to have that virtue.
	I'm not a fan of dim sum.
	Never have been. Lots of different foods I like.
	Everyone has their tastes.
	I can even do haggis.
	Not a fan, but I can do it.
	I can't do dim sum. So, for me, if somebody puts a big bamboo stack of Roger Taylor drum kit dim sum dishes in front of me, I'm like, no, I'm good.
	Everybody has these kinds of foods, right?
	Or maybe it's a particular food for you.
	You don't need the virtue called not eating if the food in front of you is really unpleasant.
	You need the virtue called not eating if you're trying to lose weight or maintain weight or whatever.
	And, you know, as you age, this is, you know, I'm 56 in a couple of weeks.
	As you age, you just have to eat less.
	It's just a fact. You just have to eat less.
	Even if you exercise, as I do, you still have to eat less.
	So you need the virtue most when you're tempted most by the opposite.
	You put a nice...
	Pepper and shrimp, seafood, fettuccine, pasta.
	Oh man, that's good stuff.
	Some carrot cake or a profiterole or a fresh eclair.
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, I had things I haven't had in years, right?
	But yeah, that's tempting, man.
	That's good stuff. That's really, really tempting.
	And that's when you need the virtue called self-control.
	I don't have to fight Taking heroin every day.
	I've never taken heroin, never taken any drugs, illicit drugs, mind-altering substances other than philosophy, which is a mind-creating substance.
	So I don't, you know, hey, man, I've been clean from heroin for 56 years.
	But somebody has been addicted to heroin and they are clean.
	Good for them. Fantastic achievement.
	Massive achievement. Smoking, I mean, smoking has a higher relapse rate than heroin does.
	The people who quit smoking, good for you, man.
	Well done. People who've lost weight.
	So with tolerance, people aren't told that the real test of tolerance is to tolerate the intolerant.
	And they're also told that intolerance is a feeling.
	So you bring people up in this Borg nonsense where they can't ever have any standards with people, can't ever have any boundaries, can't ever say, don't speak to me about your weird masturbatory spanking fetish when we're in a business meeting.
	Just don't. And so it's the people who want to push these boundaries.
	And pushing boundaries is basically erasing another human being.
	It's all these people who want to push these boundaries and nobody has any standards.
	And the moment they come up against any resistance, in other words, the moment that somebody has any standards or any virtues or any ethics or any things that they'll say, no, no, won't talk about that.
	No, what are you talking? I'm not talking about this with you.
	This is like absolutely inappropriate, right?
	Well, they get enraged. Because that's a limit to their narcissistic power and control over others.
	They can't invade forever.
	And of course, the people who have...
	The people who oppose boundaries in personal relationships always oppose borders in countries.
	It's the same phenomenon.
	The borders is the shadow cast by the lack of personal standards.
	Personal boundaries. No property just means no boundaries.
	No country just means no boundaries, no borders.
	But the way it works is that they tell you the virtue of tolerance, you get addicted to that, and then all of your self-hatred for giving up your reason, they can then focus on the intolerant.
	This person is an anti-such-and-such, or a something-ist, or a something-phobe.
	They're intolerant.
	And then rather than that being where you should apply the virtue of tolerance the most, You completely abandon your virtue of tolerance, which is only a virtue when facing the intolerant.
	You completely abandon your virtue called tolerance and become a fairly rabid, hateful, dangerous mob.
	Rabidly intolerant.
	Which is how you know it's not a real virtue.
	Is that old Oscar Wilde line?
	Well, I could resist everything except temptation.
	I don't know why I went half Milo there.
	So, when somebody says, oh, this is a virtue, and then when temptation comes along, they completely violate their virtues in every conceivable way, shape, and form.
	Well, you know it's not a real virtue for them.
	It's a permission for the opposite.
	See, the virtue called tolerance is permission for the vice called hatred.
	I say, tolerance is good, tolerance is good, tolerance is good, tolerance is good.
	Oh, I feel so good being tolerant.
	Oh, it's lovely. Oh, so good being tolerant.
	Oh, so tolerance is so good.
	I'm such a good person. I'm so odd.
	I say, oh, this person's intolerant!
	Attack, attack, attack. Lie, lie, lie.
	Slander, slander, slander. Destroy, destroy, destroy.
	Not so tolerant now, are you?
	And this is true of a lot of virtues.
	Sentimentality is the superstructure for brutality.
	The people who are the most sentimental are generally the most vicious.
	Sentimentality is the camouflage.
	Right, so the people who say, oh, family first, family first, everything for family, everything for family.
	Now, sometimes they're genuine and it's real and it's a virtue that they pursue and accept and live and all honor to them.
	But a lot of time, you know, family, family, family.
	Got to do for family, got to sacrifice for family.
	Well, the parents will often define their needs as the family, and you have to sacrifice for the parents.
	And if you don't, well, you're against family, and if you ask the parents to sacrifice for you, that's right.
	And so family, family, family is just the cover for exploitation.
	But the state says, well, we have to make sacrifices!
	Really? Really?
	The people who literally load stretch limos onto private airplanes and fly them to climate conferences are going to tell you to make sacrifices for the environment.
	And the people, and you know, this is a small, tight-knit community these days.
	We are... I've gone from stadiums to a jazz club, which I'm fine with.
	Totally fine. I'm fine!
	No, I'm kidding. It is fine.
	So... But the general way that people would make these connections and thus be liberated from their vices...
	But being liberated from your vices means being liberated from being useful weapons for those in power.
	Ah, this person is a racist.
	This person is a homophobe.
	This person is a... Right?
	Well, that's just...
	Summoning the rageful mob to attack and try to destroy.
	Which is completely intolerant, of course, but the virtue called tolerance is the cover story to release the sadly pleasurable vice called hatred.
	Because people who hate themselves genuinely believe, not deep down, but genuinely in this.
	They could probably even pass a lie detector about this.
	Deep down we all know the truth about everything, I think, but People who claim to be tolerant genuinely believe that unleashing hatred against the intolerant is a virtue, when it's the destruction of the fake virtue that they've been told about.
	People who've abandoned their own capacity for rational thought are simply running along with the herd, which I understand.
	Look, it's not a big criticism.
	It's not a big negative thing.
	Hey, you want to run with the herd?
	I'm not going to castigate you, foundationally.
	We're social animals.
	We're, you know, being high in agreeableness, which is a bit more of a female trait, right?
	But being high in agreeableness and wanting to go along, the best way to get along is to go along, and there are no strangers, there are only friends I haven't met yet, and, you know, like, I understand that, and I don't actually have a big issue with it.
	It's fine. It's fine.
	Just don't call it a virtue.
	You can say, look, man, I got kids.
	I got a mortgage.
	I can't be questioning or opposing crazy beliefs at my work.
	I can't be doing it.
	Okay. That's, you know, I can respect the honesty of that.
	It's not a path I would particularly choose to take, but, you know, Oh, you say, oh, you know, my mom's really – my grandma's really lefty and, you know, I think I can do a lot of good if I don't have to work all the time.
	I can write all these wonderful books about the values and virtues of the free market, but my grandma's a real lefty and I, you know, I got to hide that because I want to be in her will.
	Okay, so, you know, for a time being, you're selling your integrity for money, and look, we all have to make tough choices in the world, and I'm not going to sit there and judge someone who's being honest about it, right?
	Who's being honest about it.
	It's not what you do.
	It's whether you tell the truth about it to yourself or not.
	That's what counts. Everything is permitted outside of UPB violations.
	Everything is permitted with honesty, right?
	With honesty, all is permitted.
	But it's the people who lie who say they're tolerant.
	And they end up really hating themselves for betraying their highest human potential, which is reason.
	Integrity. And here's the thing, too.
	Two, if you say that you worship the good and you want to be good, well, then you have to kind of define what the good is because otherwise other people would define what the good is and program you to obey usually immorality in that way.
	So people who dislike themselves enormously genuinely believe that if they vent their hatred at someone else, they'll feel better.
	I mean, abusive parents are this way incarnate, right?
	They hate themselves, and they genuinely believe that beating up on their kids will make them feel better.
	And of course, it just makes them feel worse.
	And people who conform...
	To propaganda and programming genuinely believe that they're good people for doing it, despite all the evidence of everyone in history that obeying propaganda is to surrender your own mind and turn you into a useful idiot for rulers.
	No. So, it's really important to understand, if you're in the world and you think for yourself, We're a predator species in the long run, but we're a prey species in the short run,
	so to speak. And there are a lot of people out there who believe that attacking people they're programmed to be upset by is somehow tolerant.
	We hear all kinds of phobias In the language and lexicon of intolerance.
	But the real curse in the world, the real danger in the world, is philosophobia.
	The irrational fear and hatred of philosophy.
	Because philosophy can strip away false morality, but it takes away the drug that people feel they need to function.
	It takes away the drug of false virtue that people genuinely feel they need to function.
	You try taking candy from a baby.
	You try taking a drug from a desperate addict.
	Well, desperate addicts are emotional terrorists.
	And people addicted to false virtue are extremely dangerous.
	I say this with all seriousness and all depth and power.
	Extremely dangerous. Come not between the dragon and its prey.
	And the mechanism called tolerance is one of the fundamental ways in which people are programmed.
	Oh, are you in the presence of someone whose views you really dislike?
	Well, you're really going to need that virtue called tolerance to let them speak.
	Nope! We're just going to attack them, physically, if we have to.
	Okay, so you don't really believe in that virtue call.
	Hey, they're the intolerant ones, really.
	Because if you guys have opposite views, there's person A, person B. If you have opposite views, and you're attacking him, and he's not attacking you.
	Person B is attacking person A. Person A is not attacking person B. But then person B says person A is the intolerant one.
	That's a form of moral insanity.
	It literally is like a guy jumping out of the alley, putting a burlap sack over another guy's head, beating the hell out of him with a baseball bat, knowing this is on video, and saying, well, he started it!
	Hey, man, it was just self-defense.
	It's like, no, no, you jumped out of the alley, you put a burlap sack over him, and you beat him with a baseball bat.
	How is that self-defense?
	Well, he started it!
	No, no. How is that self-defense?
	Right, so we have this grisly spectacle of people who genuinely claim to be tolerant attacking peaceful people who aren't attacking them back, calling the peaceful people who aren't attacking them back intolerant while beating them with a stick.
	Now, that is a kind of mental Mobius strip, lower intestine London map of the subway situation.
	Kind of tortuous anti-logic right there.
	And philosophy can, you know, iron this out.
	Boom, boom, boom. Iron this out real quick.
	Oh no, your claim of tolerance is just a mask for the true mechanics, which is programmed hatred.
	Philosophobia? Well, that's the danger.
	That's the fear. Because people addicted to false morality...
	Are philosophobic?
	Because philosophy will take that drug away and say, well, how about you stop having the false drug and start having the real experience?
	How about you stop drugging?
	How about you stop trying to lie, comply, drug, attack, and hate your way into happiness?
	How about that? Just a curiosity.
	How about that?
	I mean, all the people who were like, well, you know, we really care about the environment.
	It's like, oh, well, boy, you've got to really question the state then, because national debt is incredibly destructive to the environment, because national debt is massive consumption in the here and now.
	It's sliding consumption, which should be spread out over time, into the here and now.
	It's like somebody saying, well, my diet is, you see...
	My diet is to eat my entire life's ration of food, or my entire remaining life's ration of food over the next 10 years.
	That's my diet. But I'll take my entire life's calories, whatever, millions of calories, I'm going to take 10% off it and I'm going to eat them over the next 5 or 10 years.
	Holy avocado toast mukbang baby!
	I mean, you're going to die. You won't make it to the end of your life, right?
	And so national debt is massive consumption in the here and now.
	And I made this argument like beginning of the show 16 years ago.
	National debt is massive consumption in the here and now.
	So the first thing that you'd want to do if you cared about the environment is you would want to get the government on a gold standard or some sort of fixed commodity basket or some sort of crypto that was not under the control of the government to type whatever they want into their own Bitcoin addies.
	So you'd want to eliminate any capacity for the government to go into debt because that's terrible for the environment.
	But you never hear that, of course.
	I mean, there's no argument for that.
	There's no move towards that.
	It would be laughed out of existence in the green movement, which is about the green of money and the face the next generation makes when you choke their jugular or something, economically and financially.
	So... It's not that tolerance, by definition, is a vice or a virtue.
	I think it's fine. Obviously, free speech is the greatest value without that.
	Well, not abusing children is the greatest value, but free speech is the second greatest value, which I talk about this in my novel, The Future, which you can get at freedom.locals.com.
	And you get it for free for now.
	Use the promo code UPB2022 and you get the book for free and other cool stuff for free.
	Get a trial of this premium show.
	Premium shows. So tolerance is fine.
	I think tolerance is aesthetically preferable action.
	It's like...
	It's about the same moral stature of politeness and being on time.
	It's nice. It's fine.
	But tolerance is used as an excuse for brutality these days.
	And like all mildly positive virtues, it just gets turned into a term of abuse.
	You know, like if you have taken care of a few things, yeah, I think that's a useful and decent thing to do.
	But... What was that film?
	I Love You or something like that where one character just says to the other, you never take care of your things!
	And just uses it as a term of abuse that the person is just weird and selfish and careless and like, yeah, take care of your things.
	It's a good thing. You should take care of your things.
	You should try and maintain them and so on.
	It's not evil if you don't, but it's productive and a useful thing to do if you do.
	And yes, I think that being tolerant is a fine virtue, and being tolerant means not aggressing against people you disagree with.
	That's what tolerance is.
	That's what tolerance is.
	And then programming people to attack others they disagree with while calling it tolerance, well, the tolerance then just becomes a camouflage, right?
	It just becomes camouflage.
	Like, you know, the welfare said, oh, it's supposed to be helping the kids.
	It's like, no, it's not helping the kids.
	Kids are far more likely in a single mother household to be abused.
	Over 30 times more likely to be abused.
	So, tolerance is fine as an aesthetically preferable action, but it's way too prone to producing the exact opposite of its stated claims, right?
	I mean, this is what I always say, right?
	Force produces the exact opposite of its stated goals, particularly government force, right?
	So you've got this promotion of tolerance and diversity, right?
	Okay. How tolerant are people of genuinely diverse opinions?
	How tolerant are people of genuinely diverse opinions?
	Well, they're not. Of course, they attack diverse opinions.
	Tolerance and diversity.
	Is that a virtue? Yeah, it could be nice.
	It doesn't really matter because it produces the exact opposite when co-joined with state power.
	So, anyway, I hope that helps.
	Thank you for a great question.
	And if you have any other questions or issues, I am more than happy to share my thoughts.
	Share my thoughts!
	Oh boy! So, just raise your hand if you want.
	And I am happy to Unleash you from the stigian depths of silence.
	Okay, can you hear me?
	Yes, go for it. All right, awesome.
	So I basically asked you a question basically in that text version thing that you do in the locals chat.
	I thought it was a great answer.
	I'd like to develop it. Basically, when is any habit...
	An addiction that needs to be addressed.
	Like, for instance, I go to the gym for social exposure.
	I'm just too tired today.
	I really can't. And when is going to the gym an addiction?
	When is anything an addiction?
	When is any vice something that needs to be addressed?
	And when can you just enjoy it?
	Kind of an off-the-cuff question.
	Thanks. No, that's a good question.
	I'm certainly no addiction expert, but I can sort of take a run at it.
	I mean, the standard definition for addiction...
	Is any habit that you indulge in at the expense of long-term flourishing or success in life?
	So if you drink to excess and you wake up with a hangover and you can't do your job and you get fired, okay, well that's negative to your life as a whole.
	If you exercise to the point where your joints are shot and you've got musculoskeletal damage and right then clearly you can't It was an old three's company from many years ago where he exercises to the point where he has to crab walk across the floor because he can't straighten up.
	Jack Tripper was his name?
	I don't know. Something like that. So there is a standard definition for addiction.
	However, there are people who are willing to go to jail unjustly for the sake of a cause.
	Or, not for the sake of a cause, but they're willing to accept that.
	And so, is that destructive to the long-term health and wealth and being and flourishing and all of that?
	Well, kind of. But is that an addiction?
	I think we'd be hard-pressed to say that...
	You know, Socrates was willing to go to death in order to do what he did.
	Is that an addiction?
	So, you know, the sort of standard definition of, you know, anything which interferes with your long-term flourishing and well-being or whatever.
	Yeah, I mean, there's stuff that...
	But that's stuff that's already negative.
	And people who sacrifice themselves for a greater cause, you know, then war would be an addiction, right?
	I mean, being drafted would be an addiction, right?
	I guess it's forced or volunteering.
	So... For me, the addiction thing comes, and for me, I have to be very precise about this with myself, so I'm sorry this sounds a bit exhaustive, but because I'm walking such a tightrope here every time I open my mouth, I have to be very, very clear sort of on my intentions and what it is that I'm doing and how far I'm going to go.
	So, for me, addiction occurs when When you are pursuing a behavior as a substitute for virtue.
	So if you think of an example, to go back to the drinking one, right?
	So why does someone drink?
	Well, they're usually self-medicating anxiety.
	Particular social anxiety.
	And because alcohol is a depressant, and so it can counterbalance some of the high-strung anxiety stuff.
	Now, why are they anxious?
	So, the virtuous or at least positive and productive way to approach anxiety would be to say, why am I anxious?
	And the answer usually has something to do with your childhood and were you allowed to relax as a child and were you randomly attacked as a child and so on, right?
	So, That would be the virtuous way of doing it.
	Now, why am I socially anxious?
	Well, maybe I'm surrounded by bad people.
	Okay, so if you drink to overcome anxiety and you drink to overcome in particular social anxiety, rather than figuring out the truth about why you're anxious and figuring out how to have better quality companions in your life...
	I think it's an addiction because you're pursuing behavior as a substitute for virtue.
	And there is no substitute for virtue in terms of that, right?
	Let's say a woman has very little respect for herself and doesn't like herself, but instead of trying to figure out why she doesn't like herself and what she can change, what trauma she needs to process or what she could change in order to end up liking herself, what she does instead is...
	She goes to the gym a lot.
	She wears a lot of makeup.
	She gets a boob job. She gets liposuction.
	She gets injections, Botox, and so on, right?
	And she just makes herself super hot.
	And then she dresses in tight and revealing clothing, and she goes out on the town.
	And she gets a lot of trashy attention from gaudy seed bearers and low-rent penile implant offerers.
	And she is substituting...
	Sex for self-knowledge.
	Sexual appeal for self-knowledge.
	Now, that's not going to fix her disliking herself.
	In fact, she's basically saying this is why you have to be very careful around women who present themselves in this hyper-sexualized way.
	They're absolutely broadcasting their dislike for themselves.
	Beyond a doubt, they are absolutely broadcasting their dislike for themselves.
	Now, I don't mean a woman who's, you know, she's going out to a nice restaurant and she dresses up and puts up a little bit of makeup and so on.
	I'm not talking about elegance or being well-groomed.
	I'm not talking about any of that stuff.
	I'm talking about that, you know, tits on a shelf, half-twerking, a way of walking, and, you know, just this hyper-sexualized appearance, right?
	Like, there was this woman, I think she was on TikTok, And some of these other women were mean to her and so she ended up, I think I've talked about this before, but she ended up messaging, finding these women's husbands or boyfriends and then contacting them and saying just, hi, how are you? And then some of these women's boyfriends and husbands would come on to her because she was physically very attractive, right?
	She had nice curves, a nice face and so on.
	And, you know, that for some men, that child's face with the woman's body, like this anime stuff, is, I guess, because of its neotenous nature, right?
	Neoteny is when the adult retains characteristics of the child.
	So for women, it's like shorter, never go bald, high voices, and so on, right?
	And so she had that kind of anime face and body.
	And she presented herself in a hypersexualized manner.
	I mean, no question, right?
	Does she like herself? I wouldn't think so.
	Because when you, you know, if you think you're a good singer, then you don't sing next to an air horn or a giant siren designed to warn an entire city of impending nuclear attack.
	Why? Because nobody can hear your voice next to something that loud.
	And so if you like yourself, you don't drown out your personality with massive and outlandish sexual displays.
	And for men, that might be, you know, being pimped out in Versace or Hugo Boss and having the, you know, McGregor million-dollar watch or whatever it's going to be, having some super souped-up car or whatever, right?
	I was at a mall the other day, and I saw a car and chatted with a guy.
	The car was $350,000.
	The car was $350,000.
	And, I mean, that's tragic that a person would buy that car and drive around.
	I mean, first of all, it's just an invitation to get robbed these days.
	We don't have a stable enough society to display your wealth anymore.
	But, yeah, it's just really...
	How much would you have to dislike yourself in order to have to backfill your self-contempt with a car worth $350,000?
	That's just a break-even. So...
	A woman who puts herself forward in that hypersexualized manner, no man can see her personality.
	It's like her singing, like soft-voiced Billie Eilish next to an air horn that's continually going off, right?
	You can't hear her voice and you can't see her personality over the sexual display.
	And that's because she wants to hide her personality and she feels that the only appealing thing about her is her flesh, which she didn't earn, and male lust, which she didn't earn.
	That's just biologically programmed.
	And that's really sad.
	It's really sad.
	It's tragic. And that's an addiction to me.
	I'm not saying this woman.
	I'm just saying, in general, that's an addiction.
	Because you're attempting to pursue a substitute for virtue.
	Pathological lying is when you don't think there's anything interesting Or honorable about yourself.
	So you have to lie all the time to get people's attention to make them think you're better than you are.
	And that is substituting the vice called lying for the virtue called honesty.
	And, you know, it doesn't take much to get to the root or the truth about these things.
	I had a conversation with a woman, it was just last night, actually.
	And she was very much like, I really don't like myself.
	I really think I'm just a terrible person and all that, right?
	But that's honest.
	That's honest.
	So, people who...
	I mean, I just touched on this as a tiny bit of a spoiler.
	So, if you haven't read the future yet, you might want to skip the next minute or two.
	I won't read anything out.
	But there's a character in one of my novels who is just absolutely obsessed with having power over everyone else, having power over people being top dog in charge, the alpha.
	And really towards the end of the book, he says...
	People overwhelm me, and that's the truth.
	So he has to control people because people overwhelm him.
	And because he's going to get washed away by people and their needs, he has to control them and keep them at bay, to keep their needs at bay.
	You know, if you...
	We're in a cage with a couple of lions that wanted to eat you.
	You'd be very interested in controlling them because they're going to eat you.
	And so we find out that the root of his, well, one of the roots of his endless and bottomless thirst for desire and desire for control over others is that they, he's overwhelmed by people.
	That they're going to eat him so he has to control them.
	You We have the whip and the chair with the tiger because you need to control the tiger because otherwise the tiger is going to consume you and you need to have power over people because they consume him because he grew up in a family with no boundaries where his boundaries were violated.
	So although he has that revelation, it has no impact on him because his thoughts just pass by him In this conveyor belt of, oh, that's interesting, and then on to the next thing.
	So there's no insights that stick with him.
	And of course, he only says it to himself in his own mind.
	He never says it to anyone who might actually be able to help him, because that would be to show vulnerability, and then he believes he would be consumed by the needs and personalities of others.
	You have to haunt and scare people when you're a ghost to yourself.
	So, yeah, I think addiction...
	A promiscuity. Promiscuity is chasing the orgasm and chasing the lust and chasing the desire because you don't feel like you can be loved.
	For women and for men, but I think a little bit more so for women, particularly when they're younger.
	You say, okay, if the man can't sleep with me, how interesting am I? If there's zero sexual access on the table, how interesting am I? How much will a man want to spend time with me If I'm telling him about the cat books I enjoyed when I was younger and the muffins I want to bake this weekend and my desire,
	though still unexpressed, to start Pilates at one point in my life and how much I'm able to tell apart the Kardashian sisters just from the sounds of their voice.
	It's really, really remarkable. So, for a woman to say, no sexual access.
	Now, women used to have this confidence, and it was partly social and partly enforced a little, but, you know, because there was no sex until marriage.
	There's no sexual access. Okay, how interested are you in me without sexual access?
	And there's a reason why sex was delayed before marriage.
	Because if the only thing that brings you together is lust, you won't stay together.
	Lust is like taking one of those splat eggs, those plastic splat egg toys, throwing it against the wall.
	it may stick there for a while it's just going to peel off and fall.
	So lust ain't going to do it.
	This is a challenge for women.
	How interesting are you without sexual access?
	And look, I'm not just picking on women here.
	The same thing is true for men.
	I remember Joe Rogan got really mad about this in his weird pathological ambush on our third show.
	But people got really mad when I was talking about Robin Williams and the Me Plus.
	So for men, it's like, well, I can't just be me.
	I have to be me with some money.
	I have to be me with great hair and everything.
	Depp or Brill Cream or whatever they're using now to make your hair spiky.
	I've got to have perfect bedhead and I've got to be tall and I've got to have abs and I've got to have a nice car.
	It's like, okay, but that's the same as women offering up sexual access.
	Are you interesting?
	Do you have value to people?
	Can you provide value to people without an amoral special talent?
	I mean, if you're very funny, that's amoral.
	It may be a marker of high intelligence and all that.
	But if you are very funny and you're a man, your thing is to make jokes, okay?
	That's fine. There's nothing wrong with it.
	It's good to be able to make jokes.
	I make jokes from time to time, but you can't be joking all the time.
	Who are you when you're not funny?
	Let's say you're peppy and you're up and you're up.
	Okay, who are you when you're down?
	Let's say you're hot and sexy.
	Okay, who are you when you're not hot and sexy?
	There was a movie with Anna Faris.
	I can't remember what it was. I just watched the beginning of it where she's desperate to try and land a man.
	She's in her 30s, late 30s, I think.
	And she gets up before the man wakes up in her bed.
	She gets up, she sneaks out, and she puts on her makeup and she comes back to bed.
	She pretends she just wakes up that way.
	I remember I worked with a woman up north when I was 20, and she wouldn't go into town without two hours of makeup and hair, right?
	We were out in the woods, right?
	And like the Japanese woman I worked with who was freakishly strong and never cared about any of that stuff.
	But she had real personality.
	So, who are you without your flash?
	Who are you without your amoral special talents?
	And it's really tough.
	For women to not offer sexual access or any potential thereof is really tough these days.
	It didn't used to be tough, but it's tough these days.
	For men to not...
	How do you differentiate yourself?
	How do you differentiate yourself? It used to be a pretty small market.
	We used to live in these tribes, maybe 50 people, maybe 100 people.
	You know, 10, 20 of those, maybe 30 might be marrying age.
	It really wasn't that big a pool, and you grew up with everyone, and everyone knew each other, knew who was compatible.
	Now you're just a face in a crowd.
	You're pixels on a Tinder app.
	You're just a... You're like one of those thumbprint backdrops to Impressionist paintings.
	Human blob face in background of regetta race.
	How do you differentiate yourself?
	Who are you when there's no show?
	Who are you when there's no charm?
	Who are you?
	When you can't do any displays.
	The roar, just you.
	The bare forked animal.
	Nothing wrong with having a little show.
	Nothing wrong with having a little flash.
	Nothing wrong with having a little makeup.
	Nothing wrong with any of that.
	This is an Aristotelian mean situation, right?
	You don't want to be somebody who cares nothing for his appearance or her appearance, but you don't want to be somebody who's obsessed with his or her appearance.
	Who are you when you're not putting on a show?
	Because this is what most people do, is they put on a show.
	They put on a show. And the show can be sometimes positive and peppy and funny, or it can be the show can be negative and gothy and depressed and We're self-hating.
	That could be another marker or a show.
	What happens? Who are you when you're not on display?
	This is a big question, right? Who are you when you're not on display?
	And for most people, being out there and being on display is kind of exhausting, which is why they cocoon and binge on TV shows when they get home, because it's like, oh my god, that's exhausting.
	I can't spend all day at the gym, and I can't spend all day putting on a show.
	But then you feel, you get this desperate fear, if I don't put on a show, no one's going to pay me any attention, and I won't get to have a family, I won't have kids, I won't get married.
	I've got to put on a show! I've got to put my tits on a shelf!
	I've got to be the funny guy!
	I've got to be the cool guy!
	Gotta be the muscular guy.
	Gotta be the guy with cool hair.
	If you don't mind, I wedge in.
	I think that saying, gotta put on a show, is a really great way to summarize Why I am sending myself to the gym as often as I do.
	Great way to put it. No, tell me.
	So tell me. I mean, I've had my speechy speech and that's totally fine to interrupt because I was ending up anyway.
	But yeah, tell me what is your...
	I mean, I exercise, but I'm not trying to put on a show.
	I mean, I don't...
	Everyone's thought about that.
	Like you think when you're in high school, you think, oh, I'm going to go out and work out like crazy over the summer and I'm going to come back like a beast and no one's going to recognize me and I'm going to be the coolest.
	But what's it with you in the gym?
	Well, first of all, it's probably my biggest social exposure.
	I work from home most of the time.
	It's just a habit that stuck during the pandemic or after the pandemic.
	And I also gained weight during the pandemic, and I actually got kind of really self-conscious about my appearance kind of in the past two years or so.
	It's kind of odd. You know, I'm 40.
	If you were to ask me at 30, you know, how do you think about your appearance?
	I sort of don't think about it that much, but I've been kind of just spending more time in the gym and it's great because I haven't, basically, things are better that way.
	But it's really my biggest social exposure and also concern about my future quality of life.
	And are you dating, married, boyfriend, girlfriend, or how does that play?
	No, no, there's nothing going on there.
	Okay, so that's interesting.
	So when was your last relationship?
	Oh, years and years ago.
	And why are you living this monk-like existence, do you think?
	I don't know.
	That's something I really need to look at.
	Yes, you do. No, no, I'm sorry.
	I got to interrupt you there. Of course you do.
	Of course you do. Like, I'm not full Socrates that every piece of knowledge we ever have we're born with, but as far as this goes, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, at 40, maybe at 14 you wouldn't, but 40, you know.
	You know. I'm sorry.
	I can't really comment on that.
	I don't really have anything to say.
	Now, if you don't want to comment on it, that's fine.
	But do you want to know why you're single?
	If you'd like to volunteer an idea, I'll certainly venture a guess.
	I really don't want to talk about it right now.
	But yeah, if you want to say something, sure.
	Okay. So I don't want to obviously press you on something you don't want to talk about because that's your choice.
	So I'll just put out a couple of thoughts.
	So, generally, the reason why people end up single is they don't want what their parents had, but they don't know how to get anything different, and so they get paralyzed.
	Oh, absolutely. I'm sorry, absolutely.
	No, no, you said you didn't want to talk about it.
	No, I'm just kidding. Sorry, go ahead.
	No, I will share.
	Both my parents were divorced twice, and my mom is married a third time, and I don't want any of those relationships that they had.
	I'll just say that.
	That's 100% true.
	Okay, so you don't want what your parents have.
	You have no respect for their terrible relationships, but you don't know how to do it differently.
	Yes, exactly. Okay.
	Okay. So, you don't have to do what your parents did, obviously, right?
	I mean, this whole show exists because I'm doing the opposite of what my parents did.
	Yeah. I mean, I've been happily married 20 years now, I'm a great dad, I'm a great husband, and I was raised in this anti-rational, mystical, weird, violent environment, and I've committed to peaceful parenting and reason and evidence all the way.
	So you don't have to do what your parents did, and if you weren't able to have a relationship that was completely different from your parents' repetitive Groundhog Day garbage disposal of trashy relationships, that would be something, right? Right.
	Have you identified what mistakes your parents have made in their relationships?
	Why have they been so bad?
	I think there was a bit of an overinvestment in physical appearance, probably.
	I kind of experience a little bit of discomfort when I try to examine why my mom chose my stepdad and my dad and why my dad chose his past wife.
	And wives, I should say.
	I think there might have been a little overinvestment in physical appearance, and for my mom, a little overinvestment in a past stepfather's excessive confidence.
	I get the physical appearance thing.
	Her last stepfather's excessive confidence.
	I don't know what that means. I might have misspoken.
	So my mother's second husband was very, very confident.
	I'm sorry, his very what? Confident.
	Okay. There might be a...
	That's all.
	As I examine their relationship, definitely something that he was not shy on was confidence.
	And how would you define confidence?
	In other words, if I met him, what would make me think he was confident?
	He probably would try and take control of the conversation Very shortly. Probably within two minutes of meeting him, you probably would have gotten the feeling that this person was not your peer, but he was trying to lead you in the conversation a bit.
	Wait, lead or take over?
	Take over.
	Sorry, isn't that just kind of being a bit of a bully?
	Yeah. Ah, so for you, confidence is bullying.
	Yeah, yeah, well, I mean...
	Oh, and you don't want to be a bully, I assume, because you don't appreciate it.
	I mean, if you're on the receiving end of that kind of verbal bullying, it's not much fun, right?
	So you don't want to be a bully, but women are attracted to confidence, so you can't attract a woman because being confident means being a bully and you don't want to be a bully, right?
	Yeah, that's a very good way to put it.
	Right, but that's not being confident.
	That's not the definition of confidence.
	Bullying people is not the definition of confidence.
	It's kind of the definition of insecurity.
	You're right. I would agree. So this is the challenge, right?
	Is that you have to, in a sense, take an axe verbally to the definitions that your parents imprint upon you.
	And it's tough. It's like learning a whole new language.
	For me, learning peaceful negotiation and reason was like...
	You know, you dropped in Japan and you got to pick up Japanese as you go.
	So it's tough. But what's the option?
	The option is you end your family line, for you at least, because your parents still own the language in your head, right?
	And if your parents still own the language, well, that's a relationship.
	Well, I don't want that. Okay, but that's not a relationship.
	That's just their crappy thing.
	It's like saying, well, I'm not going to work because there's a guy out there shoveling shit, and that's all jobs.
	And it's like, that's not all jobs.
	I wouldn't want that job unless I had to.
	But that's not all jobs.
	You can get a different job. That's not all relationships, and that's not confidence.
	People just make repetitively bad decisions.
	You don't look there and say, well, all I can make is repetitively bad decisions, so I can't do any of that.
	You look at them really carefully and you say, okay, what did they do wrong?
	And let me do the opposite.
	Good point. Then you can have something completely different from what your parents showed you.
	And because your parents...
	My mom is an integral part of this show.
	I wouldn't have this show without the mom I had.
	I wouldn't be a philosopher without the parents I had.
	They're an integral part of what it is that I'm doing.
	I certainly wouldn't be the father that I am without having the terrible mother and father that I had.
	So, you can redefine.
	Don't just inherit these definitions, my friend, because you're a thoughtful, intelligent guy.
	You're listening to this show, which puts, for me, you're in the top percent of people, and I want the top percent of people to get married, have families.
	I want my daughter to have people to hang with when she gets older and I'm dead and gone.
	So, don't let your parents own the language in your head.
	It's tempting, and that's kind of how we're programmed, because there wasn't too much change or capacity for change in most of human history, but don't let them run the language in your head, because if you don't want what they want, but they still own all the definitions, all you have is paralysis.
	Thank you. Before you go, I just want to compliment you on one other thing before our conversation ends.
	Yes, please. Thank you. Yeah.
	You're Canadian, and you...
	I drop a lot of American references very often.
	And humbly and bashfully, I admit, I don't know as much about Canada as much as you know about America.
	And so I'm always really impressed whenever you talk about American government, American culture, American business, American life.
	So I think that's great.
	Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	I have, of course, spent – I spent a lot of time in America in the business world and also when I still had a career as a public speaker.
	But, yeah, I spent a lot of time in America in the business world all over the place in the States from Alaska to Hawaii to Houston.
	So I appreciate that.
	That's very kind and I'm glad it's helpful.
	And listen, if you ever want to do a call-in show about these issues, you know, 40, you're kind of pushing it if you want to have a family.
	And so if you want to do that, just send me an email, call in at freedomain.com and we can have a chat.
	All right, thanks.
	Thanks, man. All right.
	Let us talk to Anna.
	You have not just a palindrome for a name, but you also have a request to speak.
	So if you just want to...
	Wait, did she vanish?
	Where did she go? She was right here.
	What have I done? All right, let's go while that's waiting.
	Maybe she changed her mind. Maybe I just...
	Oh, are you on? Yes, I'm just driving.
	So whenever you're ready, I'm ready to ask my question.
	Hit me. Can you hear me okay?
	Yes. Okay, because I've just got some wind noise.
	So I have a situation where, well, first let me say that I have this personal policy where I don't comment on any female friend's weights, whether they go up or down, because that's what I prefer.
	I mean, I'm always, like I'm a yo-yo.
	All my life, up and down, up and down.
	And I've never liked comments either way.
	Even when I have been very successful for weight loss, I would just rather people not say anything.
	I just don't like to bring attention to my weight.
	Now, I have a friend who is She's self-deprecating with her weight.
	And she's put on the, as she calls it, the COVID 50.
	She's very funny.
	And so about two months ago, she decided to actively get healthy and lose weight.
	And she is being successful at it.
	And I'm very proud of her for that.
	But again, it comes to...
	My personal code where I don't want to comment, but I feel like she's fishing for a compliment because she'll say things like, well, you look great.
	Did you lose weight?
	And I clearly have not lost weight, so I feel like it's a fishing expedition.
	So what point do I just say kibosh my personal code and just Just give her the compliment that she's so desperately looking for, for validation.
	Did you say the COVID-50?
	She did, yeah.
	50? Like 5-0?
	Correct, correct.
	Wow. I didn't know her prior to the COVID-50.
	Yeah, so weight is a big deal.
	No, because the reason I'm saying, sorry to interrupt, but the reason I'm saying is that when I was a student, the girls were all horrified at what they called the frosh 15.
	That's one five. I know.
	Where it's like, oh, I went to university and I'm responsible for my own meals and I put on 15 pounds.
	And I know, I think millennials have put on an average of 35 pounds over the course of the pandemic.
	It's like, oh my God. Okay, so...
	Now, I don't... Yeah, go ahead.
	Do you understand my dilemma?
	Do you understand my dilemma?
	Oh, I completely understand your dilemma, and with all due respect, I think you're completely wrong.
	See, what you're doing is you're taking your personal preferences and universalizing them.
	Right? So you don't like to talk about weight.
	But that's not some universal thing for everyone.
	Right? So, you know, one of the things in relationships, and, you know, I'm sure you know this, right?
	I'm just sort of reminding everyone here.
	One of the things in relationships is to remember...
	That other people's preferences can be enormously different from your own and still be completely valid.
	Now, if you had a preference for, I don't know, not being beaten up, and your friend had a preference for beating you up, then I'd say, okay, well, one of those is invalid, right?
	Don't beat people up, right? But in this situation, you don't like talking about weight because you have a yo-yo relationship to weight and you got tired of it or annoyed it or something like that.
	But this is not a universal preference for other people.
	She clearly wants to talk about her weight, and I think she obviously has put a lot into losing the weight, and good for her.
	So, it's been a big focus of her life.
	And can you really be a good friend if you ignore something that's been a really big focus of your friend's life?
	Like, if your friend had painted a painting that she thought was really beautiful and you refused to comment on it at all, you probably wouldn't be that good a friend, right?
	So, the fact that you don't like to talk about weight...
	You know, one of the things about friendship is, yeah, they've got to be different from you.
	Otherwise, they're conforming too much to you, and they're agreeing with you too much, and they're not really good friends.
	So the fact that she wants to talk about her weight loss, it's different from your preference, but your preference is about you, not about her, if she wants to talk about you.
	Her weight loss? I mean, that sounds perfectly interesting and a good topic, but it's nothing to do with your particular preference to not, you know, if you don't want to be a painter but your friend enjoys painting, I'm sure you could enjoy your friend talking about painting and you could look at their paintings and you wouldn't say, well, I'm not going to look at her paintings because I don't enjoy painting.
	Because then you really wouldn't have that many friends, right?
	Because then you'd have to, everyone would have to be exactly like you.
	Does that make sense? Yes, it does.
	I just wasn't seeing it, like, yeah, you're explaining it so well, and I just, I didn't see it at all that way.
	I was just hyper-focused on my way of thinking, and it was clearly wrong, and I appreciate it.
	I really appreciate you telling me the truth.
	Oh, listen, you're welcome, and yeah, you're welcome, and listen, make sure you drive safely.
	Sorry, you had something to say? That's it.
	Thank you so much. All right.
	Thanks. Appreciate it. And yeah, drive safe.
	Drive safe. All right.
	We have time for one more.
	Oh, look at this. Somebody with a classical picture.
	Doriclem? Doriclem.
	I have no idea. I might as well try and pronounce ancient Greek philosophers' names.
	Paranoides. Yes, you had a question or comment?
	Or have you also vanished into the ether?
	Or have you become audible to us?
	Go in once, go in twice.
	It looks like they have both come and gone simultaneously.
	See?
	All right. Well, I will close things off for the evening.
	And I really... Listen, a couple of things.
	A couple of things. First of all, free books.
	AlmostNovel.com. JustPoorNovel.com.
	Totally free. Really, really enjoy them.
	Fantastic books. You also want to check out FDRURL.com slash TGOA, T-G-O-A for The God of Atheists, another book, more of a comedy.
	And I have a whole new series that's going on, History of Philosophers.
	And I gotta tell you...
	It's really good. I mean, it's really – I'm literally done.
	I'm almost like possessed when I'm talking, and when I'm done, I'm like, I don't know what I did, but I have a feeling it was really great.
	And when I listen back, it's like, yeah, it gives me goosebumps.
	So it's just an argument for the divine, I suppose, but it is some fantastic stuff, and it is – All stuff that I've been mulling over and dwelling over and paying ridiculous amounts of money for education over for the last four decades.
	So I hook it out. Some of it's available for free.
	Some of it's subscriber only at freedemand.locals.com.
	But I hope you will check that out because it's honestly some of my best work ever.
	Ever. I don't just mean even at the course of this show.
	It's like some of my best work ever.
	So I hope that you will check it out.
	You can look at the tag History of Philosophers and I've got...
	Seven shows done, six published, and it's going to be a couple dozen easy because they are so much fun to do and it really is a very powerful experience for me.
	Well, thanks everyone for a great set of questions and a wonderful conversation tonight.
	Love you all so much. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
	Please, please do if you can.
	And don't forget, if you want to check out the premium free domain community in the world, you can go to freedomain.locals.com and you can sign up for free.
	And get all my new novel and all the cool stuff that's there.
	And you can just use the promo code UPB2022 and you can get all that good stuff.
	So I hope that you will. And I will see you in the ether very, very soon.

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