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Sept. 11, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:28:11

A New Theory! Sunday Show 11 Sep 2022

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	I have a theory, I have something to talk about, a little shiny nose there, a little Rudolph, but man, it's your show.
	You guys are the supporters that make it all worthwhile.
	That bring out the best in me, man.
	You guys give me some fantastic questions here on the Locals platform, freedomain.locals.com.
	Oofa, oofa, oofa.
	It just...
	It's like fishing with dynamite, putting your questions into my brain.
	And I will say, you know, I've always said I wanted to do even more and even better than what I was doing in the past.
	Always aiming to improve.
	So, for those of you who are saying, I'm doing my best work lately...
	Well, I'm not going to be upset about the past 16 years.
	No, that's the point. That's the purpose, right?
	That's the point, is to continue to do your best work and never rest on your laurels and never rest on your historical momentum.
	The future was awesome.
	That's actually kind of a funny time syntax way of putting it.
	The future was awesome.
	That's my new book, freedomain.locals.com.
	And don't forget, you can get it for free for a little while using the promo code, all caps, UPB2022, freedomain.locals.com.
	Just sign up. It's free for a month.
	You can cancel any time. And the future was awesome on my second listening.
	Yeah, I've listened to it obsessively.
	It's better and better the more I listen to it, which sounds kind of odd.
	I thought it was great to begin with, but I'm getting lots of subtle.
	Because I surf creativity when I write, so I have an idea of where I want the story to go, and then I have to let the story live within me.
	In other words, it can't be sort of carefully plotted and charted out.
	It needs to be spontaneous for me so that it feels alive to you.
	If nothing surprises me about the book, then nothing's going to surprise you about the book either.
	And I remember when one of the first moments I really got there was I thought that the encounter between the girls and the boys on the mountain was going to be more violent, but it wasn't.
	And then I was really, really deeply shocked at the quality of the arguments that came pouring out of Roman on their first meeting about children and how to raise them.
	It was really powerful stuff.
	And so, yeah, I half write it and it half writes me, if that makes any sense.
	You're kind of on a dance with spontaneity when it comes to writing.
	And... So I'm getting a lot of the themes later on.
	You know, Jane's funeral, there's a theme.
	Should have ostracized, right?
	Ostracism is the big theme of the book.
	So I hope that you enjoy it.
	From your experience, which professions yielded the smartest people?
	Which professions yield?
	Well, statistically, number one is physics.
	Number two is philosophy in terms of the...
	Proxy for IQ, SAT scores in universities.
	So physics, number one.
	Philosophy, number two. So which professors?
	So the way that I worked it was we had trouble hiring in my business because credentials didn't actually mean that much when it came to creativity.
	So we all together, we wrote...
	I just wrote an intelligence test.
	Nothing to do with an IQ test or anything like that.
	But I just wrote... A problem-solving intelligence test and we gave it to potential hires and that was one of the reasons we really took off as a business was we just hired them.
	I didn't even care whether people had education in the software field.
	Lord knows I didn't. So all I cared about was raw intelligence, problem-solving, curiosity and creativity and there's ways you can test for that.
	So let's see here.
	How much screen time do you allow at home for the kids?
	Or do you not have limits, per se?
	No, I don't have limits, per se, because the imposition of...
	I mean, my daughter's almost 14, so the imposition of external limits diminishes the generation of internal limits.
	So I will occasionally sort of make fun of my daughter if she spent a lot of time, because she does a lot of drawing on the tablet.
	Now, I consider drawing to not be screen time, per se.
	Also, if she's playing with friends, if she's playing a game with friends, I don't consider that just screen time, per se.
	So, there are times when she spends a lot of time on the screen.
	And I didn't do a show on Friday night.
	This is Sunday. I didn't do a show on Friday night because my daughter and I went for a little road trip, which was a real blast.
	And so, she didn't use her tablet at all for a couple of days.
	So... Yeah, I mean, socializing to me doesn't count as screen time.
	And I mean, who am I to talk about screen time?
	Although I'm better than when I was on social media.
	But I look at screen time as a way to become a better parent, right?
	So if I want my daughter to be off the tablet, I have to provide her something more interesting and engaging than the tablet, right?
	And also when she has written movies and got friends of hers to do the voices, and I've done a little bit of that as well, a little voice acting for the Steph Bot.
	So when she's writing her movies and she is getting the...
	The voice is recorded and then she's animating them and she spent two months animating her last movie.
	I don't consider that screen time because that's work, right?
	I mean, that's work and creativity and project management and directing and encouraging and all kinds of good stuff.
	I... Empty screen time, I wouldn't know what that would be.
	She doesn't really play...
	She played a little bit of sort of the match three games like Candy Crush and Candy Crush Soda.
	She played that a little bit when she was younger, but we would often play together and take turns and move strolling each other.
	So... If it's social, I don't consider it just screen time.
	She rarely does anything on her own except drawing and animating, so I don't consider that bad.
	And here's the thing, too. I mean, studies show that video games in moderation have cognitive benefits.
	Video games get a bad rap, of course, but video games get a bad rap from people like I got a bad rap from the mainstream media.
	People just don't like the competition.
	Can you be more interesting? Than a color wheel in Candy Crush?
	Can you be more engaging than Dragon Veil?
	Right? I mean, this is a big question.
	It's an important question. You can look at them as competition and you can say, well, I guess I have to really up my game.
	I mean, if you are trying to woo a woman and there's another guy who's trying to woo that same woman, you're probably going to woo better in the same way that runners run faster when they have someone who's just ahead of them or running at their speed.
	They just run faster. The competition produces quality.
	So I view the screen time as a challenge.
	Okay, I have to come up with something more interesting and engaging than a screen time, so it's made me a better parent.
	But the idea that I would just put a lock on or something like that, that's just...
	I don't know. Well, that's saying I can't compete with a piece of dumb electronics.
	Like, I can't compete. There's just no way.
	So, all right.
	EDT summer, not EST.
	I'm EDT.
	The Queen's Death and Future of the UK? Yeah, we'll get to that in a bit if we like.
	Hey Steph, I love your book The Future.
	I just feel like it is not a world I would want to live in.
	I remember a line about what would be sacrificed and it seems like vice and the art world would take a hit.
	No heavy metal, no drunken evenings.
	Maybe I'm just a creature of our world and would just not fit in.
	I will continue to bring a better future forward even if it is one I would not fit into.
	Well, you wouldn't fit into the future, and I wouldn't fit into the future, and there's nobody I know who would easily fit into the future.
	Take anyone from 500 years ago, put them in the current world, and see how well they fit in.
	Of course, it's going to be a rather incomprehensible world.
	And that really was the challenge, was to create a world that is morally great, but recognize that I wouldn't...
	I mean, I'm a combat beast, right?
	I mean, I was raised as a combat beast.
	I experimented my life as a combat beast.
	Combat for the sake of cause of good, I hope, of course.
	But, yeah, I'm a...
	I'm a combat beast. I'm even in combat with my own...
	I mean, I opened this saying I want to do even better than I did in the past.
	I'm in combat with my own past excellence.
	So I'm a combat beast and what would I do in the hyper-peaceful world of the future?
	It's not what I'm adapted to.
	And the other thing, too, is that I think we would all have PTSD if we went into the world depicted in my novel, because the PTSD tends to kick in when the danger has passed, and we would take a lot of adjustments.
	So the idea that...
	I mean, I wrote a world that I want people to live in, but I would not...
	I mean, so a person who's raised with no threat of war, a person who's raised with no violence, a person who's raised in a completely sustainable system, who doesn't have the constant electro-shocks of social media pronouncing deadly raids and global warming and death to everyone and all of that,
	a person who's not raised with that stimulus, with that constant provocation of the fight-to-fight mechanism to the point where you have adrenals burn out, How would I... How would you get along with such a person?
	It would be tough. So, I hear what you're saying.
	It is a world that we aim towards, but it's not a world we could step into and love.
	How many people are like me, in the respect that they only discovered your show after you were cancelled?
	I don't know. I don't know.
	Someone says, I discovered him in 2017.
	Listened to his first 1,200 shows in order.
	LOL. Excellent. I just found him this year.
	Oh, that's nice. Well, what's happened is the conversation has gotten much more refined and elevated because the people who find me now are the people who can think for themselves and who don't necessarily listen to negative things put out by the media.
	Like I was thinking just the other day when I was a kid, I heard that Rod Stewart – I heard terrible rumors about the singer Rod Stewart and it turned me off for a while and I was like, oh, forget it.
	Just listen to the man and he's, of course, a great singer and performer, so – All right.
	Have you considered writing an autobiography?
	I'm asking because you are a polymath and I would like to learn some of your insights and methodologies.
	I actually, I have taken a brief stab at an autobiography, but the problem is that I would end up having to write about people and it's not their fault that I'm famous slash infamous.
	So I think I'll have to wait till later in my life.
	What's the best way to understand how your mind works?
	Therapy, introspection, experience, philosophy?
	Yes. Just wanted to say thanks for all your work.
	Without discovering your ideas years ago, I'd likely be much more depressed and isolated than I am now.
	I've still got work to do, but I think I owe a great bit of progress to you.
	Thank you. Well, thank you very much.
	Thank you. A great bit of progress.
	So, yeah, I appreciate that, and I take that to heart, and I'm not trying to be false modest or anything like that, but What I will say is that, let's say I wrote a diet book, you're the one who has to change your diet.
	So I hope that for every kudos you give to me, you give yourself at least 10.
	I'm not kidding about that.
	For every kudos you give to me, for every piece of gratitude you give to me for giving you good advice or giving you introduction to philosophy, I hope that you give yourself at least 10 kudos for listening and following in the path of reason and evidence.
	Does this mean you're going to have to wait for your memoirs one day?
	Yes. Yes.
	Do you care if I quote you in any written work?
	No, that's fine with me. Just, you know, quote accurately, of course.
	Don't slice and dice the way some people do.
	Woohoo, nice to see you, Steph.
	Thank you, I feel that every day in the morning when I shave.
	Aside from your wife, what is your longest lasting friendship?
	Are you in regular contact with people from childhood?
	I was, oh gosh, my longest friendship lasted, gosh, 30 plus years.
	But no, there was a big transition, particularly after I got married.
	And so I have now long lasting friendships, 10 plus years, but the ones from my childhood...
	I mean, it's a funny thing.
	So the people from your childhood know you as a little kid.
	And of course, for those of you who don't know, I grew up, you know, basically in a subsidized housing, trash heap of a welfare state, matriarchal manner, single mother hellhole.
	And you're small.
	I was like, I was just, I was just thinking about this.
	I was just thinking about this this morning, oddly enough.
	Interesting that you bring it up.
	So, when I was younger, I felt very small and helpless, of course, right?
	I mean, when you're buffeted and pushed around and you're yanked from country to country to live, you are pushed into boarding school, which you don't want to be.
	And I remember one just really, really tragic Christmas in boarding school.
	I have no idea where my parents were, but I stayed home.
	In boarding school over Christmas and New Year's with about the most depressed teacher and a couple of other kids who had no place to go.
	One kid who was a good friend of mine, he was a kid from India and he just couldn't get back home for Christmas.
	And there were a couple of other kids who were just, you know, it was just a really, really sad Christmas, you know.
	Christmas music is so wonderful when you're with good people and you're having fun and you're chatting and you're eating good food and it's the warmth of the season.
	But, you know, that scratchy beach radio, broken 45, isolated, lonely, tragic, jump off a building kind of Christmas situation when you're alone or in the company of depressed people or dysfunctional people or messed up people.
	Nothing's better than Christmas with the right people and nothing is worse than Christmas with the wrong people.
	It is a bipolar season for sure.
	So yeah, I just remember not really having any control.
	Not really having any control over my life and feeling very helpless.
	And not being able to tell the truth.
	For sure, not being able to tell the truth.
	You know, when you come from an abusive environment, you are sealed up like a tomb.
	And you've got Geraldo Rivera cracking your safe 30 years later if you're lucky or unlucky.
	So you grow up with the burden, almost an infinite burden, of endless secrets and silences.
	And you are separated from those around you by all of the bodies you have to keep hidden on your person.
	And so, when I got older, I did, of course, make a vow to myself, as you tend to do with these kinds of things, and I said, like, I'm not going to stay small.
	I'm not going to stay small, because I am burdened with a lot of abilities.
	And with abilities come a lot of responsibilities.
	And... I said, I'm not going to stay small.
	And anybody who tries to keep me small, or who wants me to stay small, when you grow up among small-minded people, or people who are really scared, or people who are really messed up, or people who are really, you know, I call it the underworld, when you grow up in this underworld.
	There are people who fall in love with that underworld and become cave dwellers.
	They become golem.
	They become blind cave fish who are terrified of sunlight and half in love with easeful darkness.
	They won't come up.
	They won't come up. They won't come out.
	Their eyes have adjusted to the dark and any kind of light blinds and burns them.
	So I didn't want to stay small.
	Because the whole point of getting out of a bad childhood is to do the opposite, to have the opposite.
	And not a reactive opposite, but a positive opposite.
	And of course, I think like most of us who come from bad childhoods, I burrowed out of the prison using teeth and bloody nails to get out to a free world and it turns out I basically just broke into another prison.
	That's one of the black pill things that happens.
	That I got saner.
	I got out of an insane environment and I got saner.
	But the relatively sane world of my childhood has been replaced by a madhouse.
	That the world has gone mad.
	So I fought incredibly hard to become sane and got out of an insane environment and then the world turned into an asylum that you can't really get out of.
	So that's kind of tragic.
	But that is unfortunately the cycle of history that we're in at the moment where There are so many people profiting from anti-rational predations that anti-rationality has become the new deity and reason has become the new devil.
	So my friends from when I was younger knew me as small Relatively quiet, like a seed underground.
	And when I began to sort of burst through, both professionally, because, I mean, I've got my first job at the age of 10, but when I really began to find my feet from an entrepreneurial side, when I became a chief technical officer, when I really realized my abilities in the business world...
	Which weren't just technical, but...
	I mean, I was, I think, a pretty good programmer, but it was...
	I was a very creative programmer.
	Everything that I could automate, possibly, I was...
	I was...
	I would automate. And...
	Let me give you a tiny example.
	So back in the day, you would have a form with data in it, you know, like you'd sort of fill out...
	You can fill out, you know, all these forms online, first name, last name, date of birth, age.
	I guess age is calculated, but...
	Education. Like, think of a resume.
	Just fill out a bunch of forms. Now, if you have a million people, you need to be able to find a way to find people, right?
	So if you want to find people all who have a master's degree in electrical engineering, then you need to find a way to search that.
	So we did something, or I did something called QBF, which is query by form.
	So you have a form, and what happens is you bring up a duplicate of that form, but it's empty.
	And then you fill out The form and then you press apply and it filters for everything that you've selected on the form and you have to be able to run operands as well.
	So if you knew the last name was MC something you have to be able to do MC star which is a star is a wildcard and you have to do and or there's a whole bunch of things to really be able to filter.
	Now there was no query by form built in so originally what I did was I wrote a program to copy the form and change its properties And store it in the database to copy the form, change its properties so it became a pop-up query by form.
	But that increased the size of the front-end, and this is back when front-end delivery was a crab.
	So what I did was I eventually changed the code so that I instantiated a copy of the form in the computer's memory, changed its properties on the fly so that it became a query by form.
	So every single form had an automatic query by form.
	Built in memory on the fly.
	And it was pretty wild.
	It was pretty wild.
	I was really sort of pleased with this kind of creativity in what I was doing.
	And of course, that's extra features without any extra testing.
	It's extra features without any extra programming.
	And everybody else did like, well, you go to the field, you do control F, and you look for stuff.
	And I was like, no, no, I get full query by form.
	You can filter, filter, whatever you want, and so on.
	And so... I also had, if it was a date field, you could double-click and get a pop-up date calendar.
	If it was a number field, you could double-click and get a pop-up calculator.
	And again, change the properties on the fly.
	Every time the form was loaded into memory, I would change.
	I would look for all the date fields and all the number fields, change the properties, so double-click brought you those things.
	So I was creative as far as that kind of coding went.
	But I think one of my real strengths was, of course, I have very good emotional skills, right?
	So, I mean, you've heard this with the...
	I mean, lots of limitations that I have, but I'm pretty aware of my strengths at this point in my life.
	I mean, you really should be at this point.
	So, when customers have an issue, they'd fly me out to sort of calm them down and listen to them and negotiate and make sure that they didn't get too obstructive and obstrupulous.
	Sorry, that word just kind of faded in my brain.
	Oh well, covered. So, mad cow.
	So when I really started to hit my stride and became a...
	Good entrepreneur started to make some coin and have some real authority and all of that.
	My friends, it was a little tough on them, right?
	When you have someone who sort of really rockets up in the hierarchy and you all come from sort of a low place or a bad place, a sunken place, I suppose.
	It's tough. And I was able to negotiate and navigate that.
	Actually hired a friend of mine or two and it worked out fairly well and we'd have lunch together and all of that.
	But then when I started doing this and I really hit my potential, you know, I was a good entrepreneur and a great philosopher.
	So when I really started to hit my potential with this kind of stuff, You know, when you aim high, when you aim high, people have to be along for the ride or they can't.
	Or they're either helping you up or they're dragging you down.
	There's nothing in the middle. Because if they're ignoring what you're doing, they're still dragging you down by avoiding and ignoring what it is that you're doing.
	So I just was unable to bring my friends along.
	I was just unable to bring my friends along.
	Or they were unwilling to come along or whatever it was.
	So, yeah.
	And I still, after I got married, I still had some of my friends.
	But, you know, when you get a really super quality person in your life, you know, I guess in a sense prison food is okay until you get some sort of Wolfgang Puck, Gordon Ramsay situation going on with really great food.
	And then you're like, I can't go back.
	I can't go back to the prison food.
	Don't make me. So, yeah, I had a long, long stretch of friendships and it worked out okay.
	But when it comes to your potential or the people around you, this is my choice.
	I don't know how universal this choice is.
	That would be, I would like your feedback on that, I suppose.
	But if you have the choice between your potential and the people around you, For me, I've always felt that it is my responsibility to choose my potential instead of the people around me.
	Right? And it's one thing...
	I mean, if you don't have any particular potential, which is nothing wrong with that, it's totally fine, right?
	We all have different abilities and skills.
	If you don't have any particular potential...
	Then I guess you can choose the people around you.
	But if you have, and I think we do all have a lot of potential, but if you have particular potential and it's not supported or encouraged or people around you aren't enthusiastic about your potential, then you have a choice.
	You can't really get bigger or more powerful or more successful than the people around you want you to be.
	Because we conform to those around us.
	We conform to their expectations.
	If their expectations are that we'll stay small, we'll stay small.
	If their expectations are that we can do great things, we can do great things.
	This Howard Roachian complete independence from feedback from others is a mistake, and it's a biological mistake.
	We know that we're a social animal.
	We know that other people's opinions do have a huge impact on us, whether we like it or not.
	And the only people that other people's opinions don't have a huge impact on are sociopaths as a whole, or psychopaths.
	So, yes, there have been, if you have, and take a sort of ridiculous example, if you have the ability to heal people with your touch and your friends mock you about all of that and, you know, hate the poor or maybe they're all doctors and you infringe upon their incomes or whatever, then you have a choice.
	You either stay small with them or you go and help the world.
	Alright. What do we got here?
	What do you do in the face of anxiety?
	Not too bad a situation, but I would say that work to just get things done.
	Alright. Any tips for giving presentations to others?
	I have to for work occasionally now and when I see that the recording has started, I get all nervous and it ruins my train of thought.
	Well, understand that people have a big fear of public speaking, right?
	Why? Why do people have a big fear of public speaking?
	Because from an evolutionary standpoint throughout most of history, when would you need to do public speaking?
	In the tribe or in the town or in the country or whatever, right?
	Well, the reason that you would have to do public speaking is because you had to defend yourself after accusations of some blasphemy or some crime or some breach of cultural norms that was egregious and so on.
	And so we do have a nervousness about public speaking because normally, if you're in power, you don't do public speaking.
	Public speaking is always a defense situation.
	Think of the apology of the trial and death of Socrates and so on, right?
	Socrates gave his big public speech when he normally would do it privately.
	He gave a big public speech because he was being attacked.
	So if you are the chieftain of the tribe, you don't really have to give, I mean, I guess you could give some motivating speech, but you have power.
	You're going to send people to war, so you might as well pump them up, but you have power over them, right?
	You can destroy them, you can have them killed, you can ostracize or you can exile them and so on.
	And so public speaking or attempting to convince others is usually a desperate situation where you're trying to avoid being killed or exiled because you've been accused of something and you have to, public speaking, convince people.
	Convincing is a form of begging.
	I think we're all aware of that, and I write about this in my novel, Convincing.
	Where one of the main characters says, reason is what you have when you don't have power.
	Because if you have power, you don't need to reason with anyone.
	You just force them, right? So when we are attempting to convince other people of something, we are in a position of desperate danger, usually, evolutionarily speaking.
	So of course we would get desperate. Tense and stressed about all of that.
	You see recording has started.
	You see a judge with a giant axe.
	Like you see a judge with a big burly guy with a sack over his head and a giant axe.
	So it's natural.
	The way they get over it, you can do a search of fdrpodcasts.com, fdrpodcasts.com, and you can do a search for public speaking.
	I've got a bunch of essays on that, a bunch of shows on that.
	Alright, do you have an opinion on the Andrew Tate cancellation?
	From what I understand, he's a guy who got his wealth from producing porn.
	Seems conservatives welcome anyone and everyone the left ostracizes regardless of their baggage.
	Yeah, I don't know much about the history of Andrew Tate.
	I do know that, I mean, it's fairly clear, I think, that if you raise boys in a single mother household and...
	Their entire schools are run by women and daycares, run by women, staffed by women.
	The teachers are almost all women in primary schools and so on daycares.
	And you also have the entire curriculum designed around that, which is more pleasant for girls rather than boys.
	They have no fathers in their life and they have no...
	Male role models in their life.
	Then there's a desperate hunger for any kind of male authority.
	I mean, when I was a teenager, I worked in a daycare.
	I had a lot of kids there who were from single...
	Most of the kids there were from single-parent households.
	It was a pretty poor and rough neighborhood.
	And the kids, the black kids, the white kids, the Hispanic kids, they just kind of glommed on to me as any kind of male...
	Authority figure and, you know, it's obviously a responsibility you have to take pretty seriously.
	And so, you know, you...
	Oh yeah, by the way, you can tip here as well.
	If you want to tip me, you can tip that actually quite here, which would be helpful and much appreciated.
	I would really like that if you don't mind.
	So... Yeah, Fight Club.
	Fight Club gets that perfectly.
	We're a generation of men raised by women.
	I'm not really sure that another woman is the answer we need.
	And just to say we're a generation of men raised by women, I'm not entirely convinced that women can raise strong men any more than a man can raise a strong woman.
	Maybe with great parenting or peaceful parenting or something like that, but...
	You know, it's funny too because, I mean, you always see this as kind of a feminist thing, right?
	And the feminist thing is, well, a woman can't possibly think, a little girl can't possibly think of being a physicist unless she sees female physicists and is mentored by a female physicist.
	You've got to mentor these girls and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And yet they somehow think that Boys can grow into strong men in the absence of father figures, and I don't really think that that's the case.
	I don't really think that that's the case.
	And, of course, we know that the absence of fathers is highly correlated with massive child abuse, and that's particularly sexual abuse.
	Yeah, it's pretty tragic.
	You know, like if you're a man and you want testosterone for bodybuilding, which I'm not saying I recommend or anything, but if you want it, you can't get it.
	But if you want to transition, well, anyway, you understand how all of this stuff works.
	All right. I wish you were here.
	Cold Comfort for Change. Oh, that song.
	So, soil you think you can tell?
	Heaven from hell, blue skies from pain.
	Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
	A smile from a veil?
	Do you think you can tell?
	That's a great, unbelievably fantastic lyrics.
	I mean, it's a Roger Waters song.
	I think he said he wrote it down in like an hour or whatever, right?
	Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
	Hot ashes for trees, hot air for the cool breeze, cold comfort for change.
	Did you exchange a walk-on pot in the war for a lean roll in a cage?
	Ah, fantastic. Fantastic lyrics and a great just jamming along to the radio song.
	We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl year after year, running over the same old ground.
	Have we found the same old fears?
	Wish you were here.
	And what's amazing about that song, too, is that Roger Waters kind of stuck in a whole loop regarding his father.
	And his father was... Well, you know what?
	FreeDomain.Locals.com, I've got a whole analysis of the beginning of side one of the double album, The Wall.
	And it goes crazy deep.
	I mean, it goes crazy deep.
	So, just so you understand, there's a little insight from, a big insight from the show, but you should really get it.
	It's for supporters at FreeDomain.Locals.com.
	Just do a search for The Wall. And if...
	Here's one of the insights.
	So communism is hyper-femininity and fascism is hyper-masculinity.
	And people who are raised without either a mother or without either a father end up in political extremes because they don't have moderating balances to these two forces in their mind.
	All right. Have you ever had to cut ties with a jealous or envious friend, specifically after a successful milestone in a life event?
	How did you go about it?
	Yes, I have had to cut ties with a jealous friend.
	So when you mentor someone, so this is somebody I worked with, and when you mentor someone, it's usually not a sustainable relationship because they have to go out and have their life and have their strength and have their power.
	And if you're the mentor, you're kind of like the ceiling that they bump up.
	Look how hard I'm working. I'm sweating, right?
	So you're kind of the ceiling that they bump up against and they need to break beyond you, right?
	The student has to outstrip the master or the student has to outstrip the teacher if the teacher is any good.
	And so I had a friend and I mentored him in the business world.
	It was pretty good. And we actually went on a skiing vacation together, which was a lot of fun.
	But anyway... I remember he was a better skier by far than I am.
	He was an expert.
	I'm sort of intermediate.
	I can do black diamonds, but it's kind of work.
	I can't do double diamonds.
	To save my life, literally to save my life, I don't do the double diamond hills.
	But he is a very good skier.
	And I just remember we went to, oh gosh, Mont Tremblay in Quebec for skiing because the best skiing in Canada is in Quebec.
	For me, anyway. Or the closest.
	It's reasonably good. And...
	There was one spot I fell, and every time we'd go up on the...
	He was a good troll.
	Every time we'd go up on the ski lift, he'd say, hey, that's where you fell.
	I'd be like, yes, I know.
	He's like, well, you did. Just pointing out a fact.
	It was kind of trolly, right? Because it's like he was obviously trying to ding me a little bit, and he was really a good skier.
	He grew up on skis, and I only got into skiing when I was like 16 or so.
	And so... But...
	So, we would be in social situations, and I didn't particularly care for his friends at all.
	In fact, one of his friends who I considered a negative influence literally told me, he said to me one day, he said, you know, it's like, you know, we're, we'll call this guy Bob.
	It's not his real name. It's called him Bob.
	It's like, he looked at me and he said, you and I are in a fight over Bob's soul.
	Like you're like the angel and I'm like the devil.
	We're in a fight over his soul. I hope you get that.
	It's like, boom, you know, like people just say the most amazing things and remarkable things and true and honest things.
	So, we would be in social situations and Bob, again, not his real name, Bob would constantly bring up stories where I had made a mistake or been foolish or forgotten something or, you know, and it was always just kind of negative stories and I just got annoyed and I just got tired of it.
	I mean, it's fine to make fun of yourself.
	I make fun of myself a little bit.
	But there has to be a foundational seriousness about your life.
	If you're just there to be goofy and entertain others, like another friend of mine who, when he was at parties when he was younger, would smoke marijuana or whatever and then would pretend to play a game called, I can't find my feet, or I found my feet, or whatever it is, and he would make people laugh and so on.
	And again, it's fine to make people laugh, and a good sense of humor is important, and some...
	With jovial awareness and a friendly relation with your own foibles, that's fine.
	But you don't want to spend your entire day hacking yourself down and making yourself small and making yourself ridiculous, and you can't be in a friendship where somebody keeps doing that to you, particularly in social situations.
	And it was funny, too, because privately he would take me quite seriously.
	I remember him once telling me a dream about...
	He had to lay siege to a city and he got inside the city and he found an inner sanctum deep within the city.
	That had the city in miniature, and he could look at himself looking at the city in miniature.
	He looked, zoomed in, like squinted in, and he saw himself looking at the city in miniature as he was coming into the city.
	It was just an amazing dream about the unconscious.
	So yeah, he took himself very seriously, and he took me very seriously, but then in public he would just do these constant silly put-downs and all that.
	And again, it's fine once in a while.
	I do have my foibles, and I have a pretty good sense of humor about myself, but not at the expense of underlying seriousness of what I'm up to in life.
	So, I didn't end up having...
	See, I didn't have a particular...
	If someone's driving you away, and he knew enough about me that he knew that this behavior was going to drive me away.
	So, if somebody's driving you away, just respect their preferences, respect their wishes.
	So, he wanted to be...
	Like, there was this tension, right?
	Is he going to go up? Is he going to go down, in my view, right?
	And he wanted to go down, and his friends wanted to go down, and he ended up back where he was familiar with, because he grew up in a fairly low-rent environment.
	So he ended up back where he was familiar and he didn't want to come up to the heights or he didn't want to come up to the self-knowledge or he didn't know where to land.
	So he had a tribe that was pulling him down and he had me who was not really pulling him up but, you know, we're having those important conversations about things.
	So he wanted me to leave but didn't want to say it and so he was doing things that were unacceptable to me.
	So I'm like, okay, I'll respect that.
	If that's what you want, that's the way it is.
	How do you maximize your productivity?
	Do you do your writing and most important work in the early mornings?
	Oh God, no! No, I am not a morning person at all.
	I refer to the great philosopher Roger Taylor.
	The great philosopher Roger Taylor, who had a moonlight job as the drummer for Queen, when they were on tour, and by the way, did you know Queen never made any money from touring?
	Because their sets and their travel and their lighting rigs and all that was so insane and expensive that they never made a penny from touring.
	They did it to promote albums because they liked to tour, but they never made any money from touring.
	It all just went money in, money out, big flow through.
	So, Roger Taylor, I remember him saying this, he says, you know, when I'm on tour, I don't do anything.
	Because, you know, you've got two hours plus of, like, just pounding the skins, right?
	And singing, and, like, really, it's really tough to drum and sing at the same time.
	I mean, Phil Collins just, well, Phil Collins just completely wrecked his back, I assume, with bad technique.
	And... Oh, remind me one day, I'm going to tell you the Phil Collins bongo story.
	But anyway, so... Roger Taylor was saying, like, I just laze around.
	I'll watch a movie. I'll maybe go for a walk.
	But I laze around all day because I'm just getting ready for the evening.
	So a lot of productivity is not doing stuff.
	I hate to say it. It's being distracted.
	It's letting things percolate. It's letting things bubble.
	It's distracting yourself from this sort of core issue.
	You circle this core issue.
	You just wear grooves in your mind about how to solve it.
	And you do well. You'll find yourself, right?
	Yeah. Running over the same old ground, right?
	You're just going round in circles.
	And so I find distraction.
	I find playing a game of Minecraft Dungeons with my daughter.
	I find having a game of Catan with my friends.
	This can be great just going for a long walk, listening to some music.
	That can be really good for creativity and productivity for me.
	And so, for me, not working on something is really important.
	I mean, I ripped off the novel The Future in three months, which is a remarkable amount of time, a remarkably short time to work on a novel, but that's because I've been thinking about the issues for 20, for 40 years.
	So at 40 years of not writing the novel, and then I sit down and write the novel, boom, like it all just comes pouring out.
	And so not working on the novel was very good.
	If I'd worked on the novel, if I'd worked on a novel of my ideal future when I was still a minochist or an objectivist, It would have just been a bad Ayn Rand clone, right?
	So not working on stuff and letting things accumulate is really, really important.
	I do, you know, because when I was an entrepreneur, I was working my 60 to 80 hours a week.
	And there are times when, I mean, when I was doing my interviews on this show and I was reading like sometimes three fairly lengthy and complicated books a week and making notes and then doing interviews.
	And so I had help processing the shows back then, but it was a lot of really, really focused and hard work.
	And plus, you know, I had my...
	My Twitter account and was involved in lengthy and complicated debates about all of these things that I was talking about, so that was a lot.
	There was travel. I did my documentaries.
	I traveled to do public speaking.
	I mean, it was a lot of crazy work.
	Now I work less, but I think that what I'm producing is better.
	So, you know, the famous story, Freddie Mercury wrote a crazy little thing called love.
	It just came to him while he was lying in a bath in Hamburg, I think it was.
	So sometimes not doing things is really important as far as productivity goes.
	I certainly can't order productivity.
	And sometimes productivity comes out of just different conversations.
	The theory that I may or may not talk about today came out of a conversation with people and just like, boom, right?
	Or sometimes this is why I'm this constant succubi begging you guys for great questions, which you almost always provide.
	Just great questions because the great questions provoke this really great stuff in me that is really productive and positive and wonderful and...
	Sometimes, you know, you have to hit me in the head to produce a big spark, so to speak.
	Don't actually do it, but you know what I'm saying.
	So maximizing productivity, it does have to do with recognizing that inspiration comes from lassitude, and sometimes it comes from boredom.
	Although I will not say that there are times in my life where I'm particularly bored, but you know what it is.
	So maximizing productivity, you've got to just experiment and play around with things, and don't be afraid to not do stuff.
	Don't be afraid. Like, there are times while I was simply lying on a couch, physically relaxed, maybe listen to a little classical music or Gregorian chants could be very good for this, and just let things percolate, let things come.
	All right, what else do we have?
	All right.
	All right.
	Have you checked out Tame Impala?
	I have not. I don't even know if that's a song or a movie or what.
	What are your favorite fiction and non-fiction books that stick with you today?
	I... I mean, it would all be sort of historical stuff.
	I love the Russians. I love the classics, with the exception.
	I never got into Tolstoy, but Dostoevsky and...
	Others are sort of Russian classics that way.
	I mean, I adapted Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, sometimes translated as Fathers and Children, to a play and directed it and produced it and all of that back after I left theatre school.
	So I wrote an entire novel set in Russia in the 1870s because I'm always interested in what happens a generation before the revolution.
	The revolution is less interesting to me.
	So... I... I do.
	I mean, the other Russians. I've always had this huge affinity to Russia.
	Always had this huge affinity for Russia.
	For whatever reason. I mean, my background is...
	My name, Stefan, with an F, is Polish, right?
	So this is why I have to Polish my forehead.
	So I've always...
	Eastern Europe has always struck me as a very sort of deep and serious and powerful and medieval and tectonic kind of place.
	And that sort of fits with my personality, so...
	Let's see here. Oh, Phil Collins' Bongo Story.
	Okay, so just very briefly.
	Phil Collins, I think he was hired to do bongos on a song in the 60s.
	I think it might have been an Eric Clapton song.
	And... I'm going to murder this story, but one of the musicians, many years later, when the song came out, there were no bongos on the song, and Phil Collins was really upset.
	This is one of my first professional gigs, one of my first paid gigs.
	I played bongos all day, eight hours like crazy, and the bongos didn't even end up in the song.
	And so the other musician sent him back a tape and said, oh, well, here's the bongo stuff that you produced, and this is why we didn't put it in, and the bongos were terrible.
	And of course, Phil Collins was mortified that his bongos were just so bad in the song.
	But it turns out that...
	The recording had not taken.
	Like the mic was off or someone hadn't pushed a button.
	So none of the eight hours of bongos that Phil Collins played in one of his first professional gigs ended up being recorded.
	So they couldn't put the bongos in because it hadn't been recorded.
	And so what his musician friend did was got his kid to play, like the musician's kid to play bad bongos and then sent that recording to Phil Collins saying, this is why we didn't do it.
	And I just thought that was a good troll.
	All right. What do you think...
	Of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
	That's an interesting question.
	I'll come back to that in a sec.
	Somebody says, I just utterly fail to read, especially fiction, ADHD. It might become my life's biggest regret.
	Okay, I mean, obviously I can't diagnose and I have no idea, but before you necessarily leap straight to ADHD, fiction in particular is the best way outside of peaceful parenting to grow your empathy.
	Because fiction is hyper-empathy.
	Because with fiction, you get pulled into someone else's mind.
	You can't do that in the real world.
	We read to know that we're not alone.
	So in fiction, you can get pulled into somebody else's mind.
	Fiction is telepathy.
	It is psychic phenomenon.
	You can get into somebody else's mind and know what their thought processes are.
	It is hyper-empathy. It's a kind of empathy that we simply cannot achieve.
	In the daily world.
	We can't achieve this through the sense data.
	We can only achieve this inhabiting of another mind through fiction.
	And this is why the reading of fiction is very strongly associated with Huge increases in empathy, right?
	So a lot of ways to increase empathy in kids.
	Get them to read fiction for sure.
	Also have multi-year educational environments.
	That's sort of a Waldorf school thing.
	So multi-year educational environments because then the older kids look out for the younger kids.
	The older kids teach the younger kids.
	And this was the Lancashire school that I talked about in the past where you could get a full year's education as a kid for...
	I think it was about $100.
	And modern money.
	Modern money. About $100 because...
	The teacher would teach the eldest kids.
	The eldest kids would simply cascade down and teach the younger kids.
	So you didn't need one teacher for 30 kids because each kid would teach younger kids which developed empathy and also was very, very cheap.
	So as far as education could be ridiculously cheap and you would also get the side benefit that you may not remember the Pythagoras theorem but you will remember or you will continue to manifest the empathy that you got in getting empathy.
	And so the younger kids would pay the older kids to teach them, which meant you had to be a good teacher.
	They had to want to be part of your study session and all that.
	I would, before saying, well, I just don't like reading fiction, what I would do is look in the mirror and say, okay, was I raised with any empathy?
	Is empathy threatening to me?
	Is empathy difficult for me?
	Is empathy unusual for me?
	Is it hard for me? Does it bring up a lot of pain and ache and trauma because I was harshly treated as a kid?
	In other words, quote, empathy was used to figure out my weaknesses and exploit them.
	So if you work on that stuff and you can deal with some of that trauma, I would assume that fiction would be a better thing for you to do it.
	And I say this because, also, I really explored...
	For those of you who've read The Future, it's not a big spoiler if you haven't, but I really explored...
	Someone's mind, because this is the first time I've written first person, right?
	I did this, I did that, rather than he did this, she did that.
	I wrote first person, and like half the book is first person, and a guy thinking about his life, and thinking about his choices, and thinking about the world.
	So that's deeper than I've ever been into a character before, and for me at least a very repellent character, but utterly charming and fascinating in that Jimmy Seville kind of way, so...
	Let's see here. Let me just see.
	I may end up with Hitchhiker's Guide.
	Tame Impala is a band, Kevin Parker is Australia's Jeff Lynne.
	He writes all the songs, plays all the instruments, produces everything.
	Australia's got... I'll check them out.
	I'll check them out. I wrote about this in my novel, The God of Atheists, that I'm in the phase now where I've just become a music archaeologist.
	I don't particularly like a lot of new music.
	And so what I do is I just go find live versions of old songs I like when I listen to music, which is not too often these days.
	Although I was absolutely obsessed with music when I was younger.
	Alright, let's see here.
	The first person stuff temporarily causes me to be mad at you because you're reading it.
	Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I didn't use, for some of my characters, you know, I use a real different voice for Ram and I, so I use really different voices so it's easier to detach yourself from what I'm saying but if I'm using a more regular voice.
	And when you get your thoughts inside, you don't have much of an accent or anything so you have to be a more neutral voice.
	So, yeah, I can understand that.
	It was skin crawling to read sometimes.
	Because you've really got to throw yourself into it.
	You've got to advocate for the character when you're an actor.
	If you're a bad guy, you have to advocate for that character.
	You have to have that character believe he's good and believe he's wise.
	And the pomposity and vanity is not pomposity and vanity.
	From the outside, if you have a really pompous and vain character, which I think I have more than one of in my novel The Future, if you have a really pompous character...
	The character is not pompous to himself.
	If you have a really vain character, if you have a character obsessed with domination and power, he's not obsessed with domination and power.
	He's like a wise guy who just knows the way that the world is and isn't going to get sucked into any of this useless empathy that is just there to undermine and cripple you.
	So he has to be...
	He doesn't think of himself as vain.
	He thinks of himself as genuinely superior.
	And you have to really dig into that and you have to be a cheerleader for every character in the book.
	Every character in the book is a hero in his own story.
	Even if he's a smaller character in your story, he's a hero in his own story and you have to get behind every single character and advocate as much as humanly possible.
	And not give a reading that pulls back because then you're like, oh, well, I don't approve of this character.
	It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. But the character approves of himself.
	That's why he has that character.
	That's why he is that person.
	And so you have to really get in, let go of your, you know, abstract moral judgment and just really dig in and advocate for that character and make that character as appealing as humanly possible because that character, especially if he's vain, is very appealing to himself, at least at the surface.
	All right. That's why, somebody says, that's why, probably why I've always preferred first person.
	I feel disconnected from the person when reading in third person.
	When the writing is good, it doesn't bother me so much though.
	The story is fractal.
	Yeah, I suppose so. Hey, Steph, I just became a member on Locals.
	I was wondering your opinion on being a stepfather.
	I'm almost a year in now, and I enjoy it, but sometimes I feel as if I held myself back in life.
	I don't quite get the connection between those two things.
	If you've married a woman who's of fertility age, why don't you become a father-father?
	I mean, it's tough.
	You know, you can't really be an authority figure for children if you're not with them for the first five years.
	Certainly after the age of about five or so, it's really, really tough statistically to become a good or productive or positive authority figure for children.
	So there's a lot more negotiation.
	And of course, you know, children, when they get teenagers, they get kind of acerbic and all that.
	And they always have the, you're not my real father situation.
	You know, an OP hate bomb, so to speak.
	So... I don't have much opinions about being a stepfather.
	If you love the mother and you love the kids, I think that's great.
	But, you know, I mean, it's always going to be...
	I don't know if the kid's father is in the life, but you're always going to be a little bit second fiddle to that.
	And the other thing too is that if you become a biological father, then all personality traits are related to genetics in some manner or another.
	It doesn't mean we're determined by them, but there's no personality trait that escapes genetics, and they know this from twin studies.
	So if you have your own kid, the chance for compatibility is very high.
	If it's some other guy's kid, particularly a guy who divorced the mom and whatever instability produced that, then that dad is – you're trying to wrangle and connect with his genes rather than half your genes and that can be more of a challenge So I think if you have the opportunity and the desire, I would certainly recommend...
	Trying to become a dad yourself.
	Have you ever studied mathematics or any of the hard sciences, physics, chemistry or engineering?
	If so, what's your favorite field?
	I don't have any training outside of the, you know, the 12 years of grind that you do in regular school.
	I never studied any of the hard sciences at the university or graduate school level.
	I mean, it's funny. So my favorite field as a philosopher is physics because it's the closest to philosophy because you're looking for universal rules.
	I mean, obviously philosophy is physics overlapped with a lot of biology because it involves life and particularly human life, human consciousness.
	So physics... It's a glorious, glorious discipline.
	It is, you know, one of the...
	If philosophy is the king, physics is the queen.
	Physics is a glorious discipline.
	And I talk about this...
	Boy, you know, I hate to keep pitching, but please, please, freedomain.locals.com, if you're listening to this later or now, just go sign up.
	Promo code UPB2022, all uppercase, and...
	I'll give you a little preview of one of the shows in the History of Philosophers.
	I love philosophy so much that I hate just about everything that philosophy has been.
	I hate just about everything that philosophy has been.
	So if you look at the progress that physics has made just in the last hundred years, right, hundred years plus, a little bit over a century, couldn't even get off the ground.
	Now we've been to the moon and back, although we haven't had a human being break orbit since 1973 because we got the welfare state instead.
	But you look at the progress that physics has made, look at the progress that computer science has made in the last 70 years.
	And first, computers in the 1940s, 1950s, which is big vacuum tube, crazy nonsense things.
	When I was a kid, I was thrilled to have a computer with a built-in monitor, monochrome, no graphics, ASCII only, and 2K of RAM. The PET computer, the PET computer.
	And now you look at everything that computers are capable of, everything that they've achieved just in the last, I mean, my lifetime, right?
	40 years plus. So that's incredible stuff.
	Incredible stuff. I remember I had a calculator watch.
	I wanted to buy my first computer, which was an Atari.
	I was going to buy the Atari 400.
	My mom kicked in a bit of extra money for me to buy the Atari 800, which I'm very glad about because it had proper keyboard rather than that membrane crap.
	That was just horrible. I couldn't really type on it without it.
	It's like drilling for oil. So, I remember I used to, when I would be slow, it would be slow in the hardware store that I worked in, in the Dom Mills Mall, and I had a calculator watch, and I would, you know, every now and then I would just say, okay, so I was only $2.50 an hour, so on the four hours, 5.30 to 9.30, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I made $10, and then all day Saturday...
	9 to 5, I would make another 20 bucks.
	That's 40 bucks a week. The computer was a little over $1,000, so I would do okay.
	So $100,000 divided by 40, how many weeks is it going to be if I save everything so that I can get my computer?
	And actually, I was such a keener for saving that I would sometimes just not pick up paychecks.
	I just leave them. If it does not pick up my paychecks, I would leave them with my boss.
	And then he'd say, oh, here's your paycheck.
	And I said, no, I think I've got some more.
	And he's like, holy crap, why don't you pick these up?
	I'm like, I'm saving. I'm saving.
	You're my bank. So you think of the progress that physics, engineering, technology, particularly consumer-based technology, you think of the progress that has been made over the past 50 years, right?
	Okay. Look at philosophy.
	Philosophy has been around for 3,000 years.
	I mean, longer, obviously, but in terms of like what we can actually access, stuff that's been written down or recorded in some fashion.
	We're talking, you know, 3,000 years.
	Look at 30 years of computers, 3,000 years of philosophy.
	You tell me one thing that all philosophers agree on after three thousand years.
	You tell me one thing that philosophers have established, without any doubt, among themselves.
	We won't even bring in the fact that they're supposed to communicate to the general population.
	You tell me one thing that philosophers agree on after 3,000 years.
	Kind of begs that old question, doesn't it?
	The hell is it for? Why would you have a discipline that's lasted 3,000 years that has produced not one certainty, even among the professionals, let alone that which is accepted by the general public?
	You know, if people were raised to appreciate the brilliant rather than resent them, we'd be living in paradise.
	If people were raised to, you know, like so in a free market, somebody comes wealthy by providing value.
	And usually their wealth is, they generate jobs, they raise wages for people, they provide lower middle class to middle class incomes to people and a majority of their workers and upper class incomes to a minority of their workers.
	They create goods and services that make people's lives better or make them less difficult or less hard.
	And they create jobs and all that, right?
	So if we were taught this, you know, you may not have the skill to become a brilliant entrepreneur or a successful entrepreneur, but the fact that there are successful entrepreneurs is why you get a job and you don't have to go hunting in the woods.
	You may have a difficult restaurant boss, but you try carrying a bunch of plates and food around in the woods and see how much money you make.
	The fact that somebody's built a restaurant around you is why you can make money in a much more comfortable manner or get resources in a much more comfortable manner.
	So if we were taught this, you're going to have this instinct towards resentment, you know, and I used to be jealous of people who could sing really well, but it's like the music that I love is only there because people sing really well.
	And write really great songs and all that.
	And that's why there's a music industry.
	That's why I get to enjoy music.
	So the fact that they keep me far away from the lead microphone of the band Queen is why there's Queen and why there's the music that you love or I love or whatever, right?
	So recognizing that other people's abilities is not something to envy.
	It's not something to be mad at.
	It's not something to resent. It's something to be grateful and thankful for.
	I can't afford this car.
	I'm really resentful of people who can afford cars.
	No, no. You will be able to afford a car probably in the future unless you live in California.
	Well, then you can afford a car, but you won't be able to charge it because you charge it and all of California will go dark.
	So, look, my invitation to doing a show in California.
	Yeah, yeah, there it is.
	Okay. Still fuzzy.
	Hey, look! I'm youthful and fuzzy.
	Oh, there we go. Oh, no, aging.
	There we go. It's like one of those makeup tutorials, right?
	You do this and that. So, yeah, if people were taught to be thankful and grateful to the people who work hard, create environments, create value, so you can get mad.
	And I was mad, you know. I was frustrated and annoyed that there were some kids in my school who, I mean, some of the kids were, like, unbelievably wealthy.
	I wrote a play when I was in high school, and I remember practicing it at a friend of mine's place.
	Not really, an acquaintance more than a friend.
	And, I mean, the house just went on and on.
	There are two pools, and the house just went on and on and on.
	And, of course, I was living in this little cockroach-infested rat hole of a place.
	So I'd be mad, be resentful, right?
	But if you say, okay, well, the only reason there are cars is because people could afford them.
	If everyone had your level of income or your family's level of income, there wouldn't be any such thing as a car.
	So the fact that people can buy a car means the car industry will survive until you can afford one.
	And it did. They're going to be healthy on days of private car ownership, which may be coming to an end.
	So you could teach people to just be grateful and thankful that there are skilled and wonderful people in the world who can create amazing things.
	And yeah, maybe they're jerks and maybe they're mean or whatever, right?
	What's the alternative? To have nothing.
	To have absolutely nothing. You've often said that as long as one doesn't harm children, there is a road to redemption.
	What about those who do hurt children, particularly when they are children, teenager themselves?
	What does it take for them to redeem themselves, given that they were not responsible for their actions?
	So, it's not like night and day, right?
	You don't sort of go from being a baby to just suddenly being six foot tall, right?
	Responsibility ramps up, right?
	Responsibility, like, it's like childhood is the clouds and then you land the plane.
	You don't land a plane JFK Jr.
	style vertical. You land it, you know, relatively soft landing.
	you want that kind of stuff.
	So for children, you gain responsibility starting fairly young, and then you just incrementally increase responsibility until they have adult responsibility.
	So it really depends when the child was doing what the child was doing.
	And I do remember once talking to a fellow when he was about 18 about the way that he treated his younger sister.
	He was kind of cruel and mean to his younger sister.
	A guy burst into tears and he could barely breathe and he knew it was wrong, but he kept doing it.
	Okay, well then you've got some restitution to make up for, even though he was younger and a child legally when he did some of these things.
	So... The restitution is different from when you're children to when you're an adult.
	Of course, when you're a child, you're under the pressures, and you're not in a voluntary situation.
	So if you're not in a voluntary situation, then you have less moral responsibility, and you're under particular pressures from dysfunctional parents or families or schools or whatever.
	If you're a child and you hurt a child, then the thing you do is you take that responsibility for hurting the child onto yourself and then you pass a good portion of it onto the parents who were in charge of the environment.
	But just taking responsibility and apologizing is the kind of thing.
	So if you've hurt a child, whether you were a child or not, if you've hurt a child and you haven't apologized to that child, you are continuing to abuse him or her.
	Guaranteed. 150%.
	You are continuing the abuse.
	You have to apologize so that the child feels the burden lifted from his or her shoulders.
	Because we all blame ourselves.
	We're kids. It's the only way we can pretend to have any control in a helpless situation.
	So if you have hurt a child...
	No matter what. It could be 40 years ago.
	And you have not apologized for that, taken full ownership and responsibility for that.
	You are continuing the abuse.
	You haven't fixed or solved anything.
	That's why redemption doesn't happen.
	It's not like, well, the redemption could have happened, but it didn't happen.
	It's all in the past. It's like, no, the reason you don't have redemption, if you haven't confessed and apologized, the reason why you don't have redemption is the abuse is still continuing.
	Still continuing. Every single day, every second of every day that you don't Apologize and take ownership for children you've hurt is a day where you're just continuing the abuse and you know that deep down.
	What do you think of Carl Jung's works?
	I was enormously fascinated by Carl Jung when I was younger.
	I read just an enormous amount of Jungian psychology and a lot of interesting stuff to say.
	I think he got real close to some very valuable stuff and then he went on to this weird collective unconscious Mandela stuff.
	Not Nelson Mandela, but like these complicated Graphics things that...
	Anyway, so...
	I'll get into Jung.
	History of philosophers...
	I don't know if there's quite enough overlap, but...
	You know, something that Jung...
	I'm paraphrasing here. I remember reading this when I was on vacation.
	I took a two-week vacation in Aruba on my own many, many years ago.
	I just had a wonderful time, just brought stacks of books of philosophy and psychology and self-knowledge and just sat on the beach and played volleyball.
	Man, it was glorious. But I remember reading Jung.
	It was just a throwaway comment, right?
	And it was something like, but of course his parents, like most parents, were more than half children themselves, completely incapable of raising children in any sensible fashion.
	So he came real close to this really broad criticism of parenting.
	But then he just veered off, and I don't know why or how, but he just veered off into this other collective unconscious stuff that was just a giant way.
	He toured Africa and got a bunch of blacks killed carrying his stuff, and it was just a bunch of nonsense for me.
	So, all right. I'm taking a class on this exact issue.
	They're arguing philosophy produces understanding rather than knowledge, and that understanding is not a subset of knowledge.
	Yeah, I mean, just asking philosophers, can you, you know, society has subsidized you for billions and billions and billions of dollars.
	If you can't theology, hundreds of billions of dollars in modern equivalent has been, society has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into philosophy.
	Can you provide us one fucking certainty at all?
	Just one. Just one.
	One certainty. Supposed to be knowledge.
	Right? I mean, geology has produced certainties.
	Biology has produced certainties.
	Physics has produced certainties.
	Geography has produced certainties.
	I mean, astrophysics has produced certainties.
	The scientific method has produced certainties.
	Engineering of any kind has produced certainties.
	Philosophy. The fuck are you doing?
	This is why I came in like a comet and just...
	Thwacked into the world because I was just so angry and frustrated that the most holy discipline of mankind has spent 3,000 years on an ooky-kooky circle-jerk that's produced absolutely zero certainty.
	Which, of course, begs the question, okay, what does that mean?
	Why is there a discipline that's produced no certainty?
	Well, because producing no certainty benefits those in power, so philosophy has been a slave to power.
	It has been a slave to power That is used to destroy people's thoughts.
	So for me to try and take philosophy and have it serve the people, but the entire purpose of philosophy has been to destroy the people and subjugate them to the powers that be by providing them absolutely no certainties.
	I mean, the rulers have certainties because they have power.
	And so if you don't have power, but you have certainty, you can build a better world.
	But if you don't have power and you don't have certainty, you're just an endless slave.
	And the fact that philosophy has been used to enslave people...
	Well, you know, I go into all of this in my history of philosophers, so...
	Which philosopher would you consider to be genuine evil, or one who puts forth ideas with the intent to harm mankind, if any?
	Oh, there are some. Again, I'm going to get into this in the history of philosophers.
	Do you have any opinion on absurdity and Albert Camus?
	So, I mean, the thing to understand about French philosophers is their extraordinary affinity for pedophilia.
	Now, I'm not talking about Albert Camus indirectly, but just endless sexual deviance, sexual horrors that occur in the realm of French philosophy.
	So, that's kind of an important place to start.
	All right. How am I, Steph?
	I am well, thank you. What is the next level for you?
	Well, the history of philosophers is where my real strength is, I think.
	Do you know Alice Miller?
	She's anti-psychiatry adjacent.
	Drama of the Gifted Child is kind of de-rigger reading for those into self-knowledge, and Alice Miller is very good.
	Her children did not work out so well.
	Well, now again, that could be any variety of reasons, but it's something to look at.
	Camus signed the Age of Consent document and all the other ones signed.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	That's his desire to radically lower the Age of Consent in France.
	Just horrendous.
	Is Sam Harris an evil philosopher?
	I don't think he's a philosopher myself.
	No particular interests or opinions on Sam Harris.
	All right.
	Look at that.
	All right.
	I'm not doing politics.
	Politics is no place for a philosopher these days.
	If you follow Nietzsche, you can't follow reason as far as that goes, right?
	Well, Nietzsche identified but didn't advocate sort of will-to-power stuff.
	So, no, there's no place for a philosopher in politics at the moment or for the foreseeable future.
	All right.
	Last comments or questions?
	If you've got a yearning burning and people are typing so I don't want to jump into something else, maybe I'll need a little bit more than 15 minutes for my new topic.
	Look at me teasing you with a brand new theory!
	Although I'm thinking of working on a series.
	So, you know, atheists, particularly leftist atheists, or statheists, as I call them, statist atheists.
	Atheists, oh, original sin.
	How could you believe in original sin?
	People aren't responsible for the sins of their ancestors.
	But you're responsible for slavery and, oh, by the way, here's your portion of the national debt.
	So suddenly you are responsible for the greed and abuses of your elders.
	So look at that. Original sin has just been resurrected for political expediency and they'll still continue to mock original sin while burdening the next generation with guilt for their ancestors' activities and debt.
	All right. Does pineapple on pizza deserve the death penalty?
	No, because eating pineapple on pizza is worse than death.
	So the death penalty would actually be an improvement on that.
	All right, hit me with a Y if you want me to race into my theory in the last couple of minutes.
	Okay.
	Yeah, okay. I think we've got a solid bunch of yeses there.
	In so many courtroom dramas, this particular situation occurs, right?
	And the situation is this.
	Ma'am, you claim that you saw across the parking lot my client engaged in this illegal activity.
	Yes, I did. Okay, ma'am, could you just tell me what time it is?
	What do you mean? Well, there's a clock right over there.
	Can you just tell me what the time is?
	Oh, I can't...
	I can't...
	Sorry, I can't see that. It's a bit blurry to me.
	My eyes are getting a little old.
	Oh, so you don't have your glasses with you today?
	No. Did you have your glasses when you saw my clients across the parking lot committing this particular crime?
	No, I didn't. So if you can't tell the time, how on earth could you tell what my clients look like across the parking lot?
	Well, I guess you got me there, Sonny!
	If you can't see the clock that's kind of close, how on earth could you see the people across the parking lot?
	This is a typical kind of thing that happens in courtrooms.
	I know this because I watch some courtroom stuff to prepare for my own courtroom dramas in my latest novel, where you will be absolutely shocked.
	If you listen to this novel, read this book, you'll be absolutely shocked at the courtroom scenes.
	Anyway, so...
	If you can't see what's up close, I mean, wouldn't you?
	If somebody can't see what's up close, they're not wearing their glasses, they can't see what...
	Now, some people could be farsighted or nearsighted or whatever, right?
	But just in general, you know, if someone can't see something 20 feet away, do you expect them to be able to perfectly see something 200 feet away?
	Well, generally no, right?
	So, you know, if you were with someone, a friend of yours, you knew he needed glasses, he didn't have glasses with him, and you said, oh, can you tell me the time on that clock that's 20 feet away?
	And they say, no, I can't see that.
	And you say, okay, well, could you tell me the time on that clock that's 200 feet away?
	But of course they couldn't, right?
	So the basic idea or argument is, if you can't see that which is close, I'm not going to listen to you about that which is further away.
	If you can't see big signs right in your face, can you see tiny signs far away?
	Well, no. Now, if we switch from visual acuity to moral acuity, people ask about the Queen and Prince Charles and so on.
	So, for those of you who don't know, there was this truly satanic figure in British history named Jimmy Saville.
	And he was a DJ and he had a show called Jim will fix it and he was a presenter on top of the pops which is a music show and he was awarded the I don't know some highest honors and Margaret Thatcher made sure he got the highest honors and he was you know really great friends with Prince Charles to the point where Prince Charles was asking him advice I've read reports that Jimmy Savile came in To try and help Prince Charles in his marriage to Princess Diana and so on.
	And this guy moved very easily and very powerfully with the massive support of people on the left and the right and in between all throughout the upper echelons of British society.
	through royalty, through prime ministers and all of that, and was awarded the highest honors.
	And then after he died, it was revealed that he was a serial child rapist and had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of victims, probably even more.
	And I won't get into even some of these more unholy accusations because that surely ought to be enough, right?
	And he did, quote, charity at a children's hospital, but in fact he would assault and molest the children who were sick.
	Like, sick, dying children, this creep would...
	And the nurses would tell the kids, just, man, when this guy comes, just pretend to be asleep.
	I'm begging you, just pretend to be asleep.
	Don't respond to anything.
	Now, you can look this guy up.
	But just... Don't do it before you go to bed or you will have dreams that are a portal to hell.
	Yeah, Netflix has a documentary about him, that's right.
	So... I mean, it was hugely disappointing to me that Margaret Thatcher was involved in suppressing a report on abuses, serious abuses within Parliament.
	I don't mean corruption abuses, but the worst kinds of abuses.
	So, now Prince Charles is quite the moralist, you know, quite the moralist.
	Oh, very concerned about the environment, very concerned about global warming, very concerned about all the evils that are happening in the world, and just, you know, a big...
	Boy, he just really, really cares about the morals and ethics and future of viability and all of that.
	Don't even get me sided with Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein.
	Bill Gates so concerned with the health of the world and just making sure the children are safe.
	So... For me, and I've put this forward as a general principle, it's not ironclad, but man, it's a good place to start.
	In the same way, you wouldn't buy a diet book from a guy who was fat, like morbidly obese.
	You wouldn't buy that. It wouldn't even be bad comedy, but nobody would try and sell that and you wouldn't buy it.
	So to me, it's like, okay, so if you're really best chums, good friends with a guy who rapes ill and dying children...
	Why would I care what you have to say about anything?
	I mean, it's just one of these basic things, right?
	Why would I care what you have to say about anything?
	And that's not really something that's talked about.
	I mean, it just kind of gets blurred out and vanishes.
	Why... It wasn't like Prince Andrew kept the best company either.
	But to me, it's like, that's it.
	Like, I'm done. I mean, if you were friends for decades, really good friends, to the point where, again, according to some reports, Charles invited Jimmy Savile in to help him with his marriage.
	You're best buds. It means, okay, that you have no capacity to identify evil.
	You have no capacity to identify evil.
	And come on, everybody hears rumors.
	I mean, if the nurses know, come on.
	Everybody hears rumors. Everybody.
	Because the moment the guy died...
	So...
	I mean, it's like the Harvey Weinstein stuff, right?
	Was it Jennifer Lawrence having nightmares about Tucker Carlson?
	See all these pictures of Jennifer Lawrence smiling and having a great time with Harvey Weinstein.
	But no, she has nightmares about...
	Oh my God, we just live in a morally crazy world.
	Morally crazy world. Tucker Carlson, of course, has his faults, but seems like a very decent and upright fellow in a lot of ways.
	His last book was good. So, if you're best buds, not with a guy who's kind of sketchy, not with a guy who, you know, may or may not have been falsely accused of a crime, but this guy.
	Like, why would anyone listen to anything this person had to say ever again?
	Well, you know, global warming poses a grave and existential threat to humanity, because protecting humanity is so important to the children.
	I care about the children of the world, that the children I grow up into has got to be weather-stable, because if I eat bugs and give more money to the government, they'll make gooder weather.
	It's like, no, you were good friends with the Multi-decade child rapist.
	Like, you don't have any capacity to identify threats of the world against the children.
	I mean, come on. It's ridiculous, right?
	You know, if you go to a doctor who's got a giant fucking tumor coming out of his head, and he says, I'm an expert at detecting the very early stages of very subtle tumors in other people, and he's got this giant grapefruit of a tumor growing out of his head, would you feel like you'd entered the insane world?
	Clown posse underground of existential reverse brain madness?
	Yes, of course you would. I mean, this would be ridiculous.
	Like, this would be obvious bad comedy.
	Nobody would even make that skit because it would be just too obvious.
	He's got this giant tumor coming out of his head.
	Looks like a Klingon with a head wound.
	He's got this head bump.
	He's got a giant tumor coming out of his head.
	I'm an expert at detecting tumors 10 years before they ever manifest towards anyone else.
	What would you even say? So, just for the people who've been in the orbit of these kinds of people, I mean, the crimes are out and we can...
	For everyone who's been in their orbit, like, why would I care about anything you have to say about anything?
	Anybody who's been associated with the Seville's or the Jeffrey Epstein's, the Harvey Weinstein's, like, why would I care about anything you would have to say about anything ever again?
	Why? I mean, help me understand this, people.
	What am I missing here? Like, isn't that just kind of a...
	Obvious, you know...
	I mean, it's just crazy.
	How on earth...
	Oh.
	Yeah, Oprah hugging on Weinstein.
	Yeah, I mean, why, you know, why would you listen to anything that anyone had?
	Well, I didn't know.
	Okay, fine. So you don't know.
	You can't read the clock that's 10 feet from your face, but you want me to believe you can read a clock 2,000 feet away.
	Yeah, it's wild.
	It's wild that, I mean, this just isn't talked about.
	No, no, so I get, you know, the politics and the, you know, sort of, you know, so Charles gets to inherit 100% of his mother's estate.
	In England, there's a 40% inheritance tax, but the royal family is immune, obviously, right?
	They're exempt, right? So create a rule, exempt yourself.
	That's the whole purpose of power. Create a universal rule, but exempt yourself.
	So... It's wild stuff just that people don't just say, well, yeah, but you were friends with this guy.
	Why would I care what you have to say about the environment?
	Sustainable farming is the way.
	It's like, yeah, but you were friends with this guy.
	I can detect this tumor 10 years before it shows up with my super psychic powers.
	It's like, but you have a giant tumor on your own head that you haven't noticed.
	And this is biblical 101, right?
	Why are you so concerned with the speck of dust in your brother's eye without noticing the giant log in your own?
	I wish people would talk about this, but there's probably a reason why they don't, because they don't want to get deplatformed or whatever.
	But I got deplatformed from the present, but I got deplatformed.
	Totally re-platformed for the future, right?
	Because you're either talking about the present, in which case your philosophy dies with you, or you're talking about the future, in which case you can live forever.
	So they gave me immortality by giving me a smaller audience because it's a bigger audience in the future because I'm talking about more universal themes.
	And of course they will look back, right?
	I mean, this is part of the process of working on science fiction.
	Part of the...
	Detail and scope and power of my novel The Future is looking back at the world that is from the world of the future.
	Looking back on the world that is now from the world of the future.
	In the same way we look back at the Salem Witch Council, we look back at the St Vitus Dance where people would just go insane and dance themselves to death and we'd say, wow, what an insane environment.
	And we look back and we say, these people must have...
	It was a madhouse back then.
	Well, of course it's a madhouse now and people will look back and say...
	How do these people even function?
	And again, this is all talked about in, I think, good and powerful detail in my novel The Future, which again, you can totally get for free.
	But people will look back and say, so wait, people honestly believe that this guy cared about the temperature 50 years from now.
	Because he just wants people to be safe, and the children now are going to have a good environment, and he really cares about the future and the children, and he really...
	The morals of the world's temperature 50 or 100 years from now is his big focus, and one of his best buds was Jimmy Saville.
	Like, how did people...
	How was this not obviously noticed by everyone and for everyone?
	It's just wild. He's just wild.
	Yeah, it's like if... I don't know, Mark Twain or George Orwell had been denied being published in newspapers, they would have been less tempted to do their daily analysis of contemporary events, and they would have written more powerful and great books.
	All right. Thanks, everyone.
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