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Jan. 5, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:25:59

Wednesday Night Live with Stefan Molyneux!

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	Let's get our chitty chatty bing bang on.
	Hope you guys are doing well.
	And I'm going to start with a question I got a little bit earlier.
	Sort of an important one.
	Somebody says, Steph, please help me make sense of something.
	I've had a running argument with someone about the necessity of the state.
	She says it's necessary because it be the Wild West, which is more peaceful and free than people realized otherwise.
	I can't admit the numerous government atrocities committed around the world, including your off-referenced 200 million citizens slaughtered by the government figure, as well as the past two years of COVID madness, still can't break through, even though she complains constantly about the lockdowns of acts and sanity herself.
	How are we supposed to build or sustain any momentum if even like-minded folks refuse to accept these basic facts and arguments?
	Well, that's a hell of a question.
	And I, of course, have spent a lot of my life as a whole trying to figure out why people...
	Barton Fink style, why they don't listen!
	Why don't they...
	Listen to simple facts, reason, and evidence.
	I called it utopia some years ago.
	Utopia like Y-O-U. Utopia.
	You live in a world, in your personal relationships, at least I hope, where you don't have violence, you don't beat up your boss over your pay increases, you don't beat up your girlfriend over differences in opinion about where you...
	Want to eat for dinner and so on.
	So you live in a violence-free utopia in your personal life and somehow there's this weird ripple in the space-time continuum when you pass beyond your own personal life where you would never accept violence as a daily part of your life.
	Somehow there's this other realm called society where the opposite is true and violence which would be reprehensible in your personal life is absolutely necessary for society as a whole to function.
	Look, people aren't talking about society.
	Society is too abstract a term for most people.
	They're not talking about society.
	They're talking about, basically, they're either talking about their parents or they're talking about themselves.
	So if you say violence is immoral, if their parents were violent towards them, then their parents are immoral.
	If they say, well, violence is better than the mad, rabid chaos, Of freedom.
	What they're saying is that I wish to withhold a corner of morality wherein my parents' misdeeds are not criticized.
	They're not talking about the state.
	They're not talking about virtue.
	They're bonded with their parents, and that bond with usually people, I mean, most parents are violent in one form or another.
	I mean, three-quarters of parents still spank their children.
	I think it's a bit higher in the black community, a bit lower in the Asian community, but the Asian community is brutal on conformity and workaholism as a whole.
	And they send their kids to government schools that are funded by violence.
	A lot of the people's parents...
	I mean, remember, a lot of people are dependent on the state, right?
	Your welfare state, government contracts, government employment, you've got the military-industrial complex, you've got, I mean, NGOs of just about every kind and flavor.
	At least half the population is really dependent on the state.
	If you define the state as a coercive institution, then...
	People don't fall on the sunny side of history.
	That's really tough. Everybody wants to feel like a moral hero in his or her own mind.
	How many people actually are?
	Well, I think it's safe to say it's just a smidge smaller than the number of people who perceive themselves to be.
	Which is why I talk to people about their childhoods, their histories, what is in the way of them in truth, right?
	The opposite of truth is not ignorance.
	Because ignorance can be identified as such and cured.
	The opposite of truth is trauma.
	That's the antonym.
	Truth versus trauma.
	Trauma is when you avoid a morally ugly fact in your own history in order to maintain a pretend bond with pretend virtuous people.
	Trauma is when...
	It feels like suicide to accept a moral truth, and of course it would have been if you were raised by aggressive or violent parents, then accepting that moral truth and calling them evil in your own mind and heart while still under their legal and physical control would have been suicidal.
	It would have been the suicide, my friends.
	So, the opposite of truth is trauma.
	This is why Socrates didn't achieve his goals, right?
	So he said, well, evil is just a form of ignorance, and as soon as we enlighten people as to their own rational self-interest, the care and quality of their soul, the happiness and virtue of their existence, once we educate people about virtue and they understand the price of vice...
	We'll just get a moral world, won't we?
	Well, it didn't work out that way.
	It has not worked out that way for the entire history of philosophy, and I just went through all of this with my 19-part History of Philosophy series, available right here on Locals for subscribers.
	Why hasn't it worked? If evil is simply a form of ignorance, if immorality is simply a lack of knowledge, why has philosophy yet to cure it?
	In fact, you could really reasonably argue that the power of evil has only escalated with the power of technology.
	Because evil is not ignorance.
	Evil is trauma.
	Some trauma causes you to avoid truth, and excessive trauma, with no ameliorating self-knowledge, causes you to pursue the infliction of trauma upon others.
	Like all animals, we're drawn to power, and if it appears that immorality and falsehood is ascendant in society, people will flip to that in the same way that women can always survive an invasion by falling on their backs.
	Let's see here. Thoughts on autism?
	I don't really have any thoughts on autism in particular.
	I don't consider it a very philosophical topic.
	It seems to me more medical or brain science.
	Hi, Steph.
	Maybe I got it wrong. But in your video, the story of your enslavement, you said in the end, to see the farm is to leave it.
	What do you mean by it? Can you elaborate?
	Thank you. Sure.
	Sure. Sure.
	So people have a view of the powers that be in society, in the world.
	They have this view, based upon things that weren't provided to them as children, that the state, that the rulers, that the people in charge view them, their citizens, as with benevolence.
	They just want the best life for them.
	They want to keep them safe and happy and protected and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And that's not the case.
	Not the case at all. We are viewed, in general, as livestock.
	And so, when you see the farm, you leave it.
	It means that you leave the illusion that the farmer is there to keep you happy and healthy.
	Like, he might give you health care.
	He might keep you safe from predators.
	He might even protect you from yourself to some degree.
	But that's only to enhance the meat and milk and muscle that he wants to exploit.
	So if you see the farm for what it is, you leave the farm.
	In other words, you leave the farm within your mind.
	You no longer view your country as a benevolent, kind entity with a centralized agency of kindness and wants to keep you healthy and happy and all of that.
	And if the pandemic and the results of that haven't elaborated that for people well enough, I don't think there's much that I can say.
	I'm not talking about you, whatever. Hi Steph, few live streams ago you were telling a story in which Izzy hadn't respected a deadline for a reason of not being important.
	It wasn't important. I kind of have a similar problem with even important deadlines.
	Can you explain what you explained to her about a method of respecting deadlines even if they're boring or not important?
	I'm not sure what you want me to do here.
	If I explained it in the past...
	Why on earth would I waste time explaining it again?
	Tell me what you didn't understand from the last time, but I'm not going to just rewind a show because you didn't want to listen to it again.
	Hey man, that song you did live, can you just play it again live?
	It's like, all right. Stefan Molyneux for house speaker.
	Oh, that's funny. How can teachers best support students from, at best, extremely strict families who present with crippling anxiety?
	Thank you for all you do.
	That's a tough one, man.
	That's a tough one. If you confront...
	Even within the children's mind, the strictness of the parents, then the child will almost inevitably, this is why it's so tough to deal with this stuff, if you say, well, you know, your mom does seem a bit authoritarian and all that, then the next time the kid's in a screaming match with his mom, he's going to say, and you know who else thinks you're a real bitch?
	You know who else thinks you're totally anal?
	You know who else thinks you're a controlling witch?
	My teacher! And then, right?
	So, it's really tough.
	I don't have any particularly good examples.
	What you can do, of course, is not be quite as strict yourself and see if that translates in some kind of way.
	All right. Thank you for the tip.
	Tips are gratefully accepted.
	And hey Steph, loving the show.
	I'm going to try and tip more often.
	You deserve it, especially more than restaurant staff.
	Their philosophy is tasteless.
	Tomorrow will be my first time as a hiring manager.
	The role is for a software engineer at my company.
	Any tips or advice? So, I've interviewed over a thousand people, hired maybe a hundred people over the course of my career, most of which were pretty successful, at least nine out of ten, and some very successful.
	So, you want to avoid, when you're hiring, you want to avoid people who view the job as beneficial to them.
	Like, And this is true about more than just this dating.
	So if somebody sits down and basically tells you how important the job is for them, that they want the job, they really want the job, really happy to take the job, feel that they'd be a good fit for the job and so on, then the job is all about them and what benefits them.
	And that kind of worker is going to get job satisfaction and stop working.
	Now, what you want, this is both if you're trying to get a job and if you're on the other side, on the hiring manager side, what you want is you want...
	An employee who says, here's how I'm going to benefit the company.
	Here's how the company is going to benefit from hiring me.
	Obviously, if you're paying someone $50,000 or $60,000 a year, that's beneficial to them.
	That doesn't even need to be said, right?
	And somebody who says, I would be a good fit.
	I would be successful in this position.
	I mean me, I. So...
	Obviously, I want to get donations.
	I want to financially support the operation and do my documentaries and all of that.
	But I have to talk about how philosophy benefits you.
	I mean, when I say I would like a donation or I'd like a tip, of course I would, right?
	No question. It's also motivating for me, just as it is for you to be paid.
	But I have to talk about how philosophy is going to benefit you.
	So in this particular instance, if you want to hire the best people, the best employees understand that they have to produce at least 50% more than they consume in terms of resources.
	You're paying somebody $50,000.
	Ideally, they would produce at least $100,000 worth of value.
	You could probably get by roughly break even with $75,000 because you've got your payroll, your taxes, your overhead, your computers, your office space, your whatever, right?
	What you want is someone who says, here's how you're going to benefit from hiring me.
	Here's how the company is going to benefit from hiring me.
	Here's all the skills that I bring that are going to make you look good, that are going to make your company look good.
	And I'm very enthusiastic about helping this company do well for some larger than a paycheck mission statement.
	You know the old story, two guys building a wall.
	One guy says, I'm building a wall.
	I'm just putting one brick on top of the other.
	And the other one says, I'm building a cathedral to glorify God.
	So if you...
	I wouldn't go for a job unless I could see some larger mission statement that would move me and give some sort of value other than the merely material.
	You know, the Bitcoin people obviously hoping to bypass the predatory, inflationary, made-up money of fiat currency and they have a liberty oriented.
	The Bitcoin cash people are that way inclined as well.
	Some of the pump-and-dump shitcoins are more around...
	Get in on the ground floor, and then you make a bunch of money, and then you dump it.
	That's just a resource transfer.
	Some people imitate it, like Sam Bankman-Fried, who was like, effective altruism, and you just become wealthy so that you can give to charity.
	It's like, no, that's not a thing.
	What you want to do, of course, is if you are feeling very charitable, then you would encourage your employees to give to charity, but you wouldn't...
	Like somebody who's like, I'm going to make a lot of money and give it to charity.
	It's like, no, because that's going to kill the business.
	You've got company A and company B. Company A is taking half the profits and investing in charities or giving it to charities.
	Company B is taking all the profits and reinvesting it back into the company.
	Which company is going to survive?
	Company B. Somebody who says, I want to become wealthy...
	So that I can give to charity is saying, I'm going to cripple this company and shoot it in the foot.
	And I don't know, just people who judge on intentions rather than basic math.
	My God. Don't, you know, your vanity project shouldn't be a tax on my employment.
	So... So when you are sitting, somebody says, tips on how to have successful sales calls with potential clients, make it about them.
	I'm here to serve you. I'm here to make your life better.
	I'm here to enhance your existence.
	I'm here to have you be better off after having done business with me than beforehand.
	So when I was in the business world, I wrote an entire software program to make a business case for clients.
	Back in the days when I was in the environmental software business, we supported companies that did phase one environmental site assessments where you do groundwater and soil analysis.
	You make sure that you're not building some hotel on something that used to be a crematorium or a battery plant or an old gas station with underground storage tanks.
	We had a company that partnered with us that offered half off if people used their software, right?
	So these things were $3,000 to $5,000 back in the day, half off.
	How much does our software cost?
	X amount of dollars. You get half off.
	How many of these do you conduct a year?
	Here's how long it's going to take for my software to pay for itself.
	Even in just this one particular area, I wanted to get the ROI back to a year or less and have that all be trackable and all of that.
	So, yeah, you're not there to take people's money.
	You're there to give them money. I wasn't there to get paid $100,000 for my software.
	I was there to give them $150,000 in their first year.
	And then after that, it was all gravy and the data was searchable and sortable and reportable and we would do their file, their regulatory reports.
	So, yeah, you're not there to take people's money.
	You're there to give people something of value, right?
	Not something of value costs, right?
	So, if you focus on, I want the sale, I want the job, you shouldn't get the sale, and you shouldn't get the job.
	If you focus on, I want my customers and clients to be happier, to have better, and it doesn't have to be money, it could be any number of things, right?
	But I want my customers to be happy.
	Then, people respect that level of care and concern for them, right?
	Every show that I do, I'm thinking about How can philosophy make your life better, happier, more effective, more efficient, more productive, more enriched, right?
	I feel like conversations on politics and family with most people is trying to detangle 100,000 years of Stockholm Syndrome.
	Yeah, that's just a very good way to put it.
	You may have answered this last show, but do you think people can actually consent to arranged marriages?
	It just feels like a form of human trafficking to me.
	People can actually consent to arranged marriages.
	Well, if it's not force, then it's not a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	If there's a lot of pressure put on the kids at the age of 18 or 19 to get married, then, well, you're allowed to have pressure on you.
	You're allowed to put pressure on people, aren't you?
	You can't police that.
	Let's see here. So my wife is in school to teach and has many teacher friends.
	When I speak to her or her friends, she calls me non-supportive and condescending.
	I bring up charity systems and lower pay because summers and winters off, etc.
	She states I'm incentive.
	Incentive? She states I'm inciting, is that what you mean?
	And turns off my reasoning.
	Thoughts? I'm sorry, I'm not quite understanding this issue.
	I mean, you met her.
	You chose to ask her out.
	You dated her. You chose to get engaged.
	You chose to get married.
	You chose to stay married.
	I'm not sure what you're complaining about.
	Sorry, I'm genuinely confused here.
	I'm not sure what you would be complaining about.
	I mean, this is how I hear it, right?
	Just so you know how you hear it, how you sound to other people.
	It would be like me saying, You know, I needed a car and I test drove probably 10 or 15 cars.
	I finally narrowed it down to this one car and then I test drove it again and then I leased it for a while and I drove it and then I ended up buying the car and I've now had the car for five years.
	God, I hate this car!
	God, this car is bothering me!
	I don't follow this.
	You chose her. What are you complaining about?
	I'm not saying, look, have you ever heard me complain about my wife?
	Ever. Have you ever heard me complain about my wife?
	Other than sort of jokey things that she moves things around.
	You will never, ever, ever, ever hear me complain about my wife.
	Because she's wonderful.
	I chose her because she's wonderful.
	To complain about somebody else is also to assume a mantle of perfection yourself, which is the form of staying away from people emotionally in terms of vulnerability and openness.
	You ever heard me complain about my daughter?
	Nope. You ever hear me complain about de-platforming?
	Not really. Why are you complaining over something that you spent many years picking and choosing and committing to?
	She is who she is.
	And you chose her.
	Like, people aren't buffets.
	You can't pick and choose.
	Well, I like this aspect of her body.
	Just like this, people are not buffets.
	Well, I like the fact that she's really intelligent, but I don't like the fact that she's really perceptive and argumentative.
	People aren't by face. You chose her.
	And... I would imagine that you are being non-supportive and condescending.
	I mean, I don't know what non-supportive means.
	Non-supportive for a lot of women means you don't agree with me.
	Okay, try agreeing with her.
	And try agreeing with her and understanding her point of view.
	See, a lot of times we'll try and...
	Fix things without understanding them, and that is condescending.
	So, I don't, I don't, I really don't, genuinely have no idea what you're complaining about.
	You dated her, got engaged, got married, stay married.
	Surely you knew all of this, and you had vows, right?
	You had vows to, I promise to love, to honor, to obey whatever you had, sickness and health, and better and for worse, till death do us part.
	You made a vow. Does that vow mean nothing?
	Did you say, well, I will love you, but not if you disagree with me about something.
	Not if I get to complain about something.
	If you start slicing and dicing your wife into things you like and things you don't like, you are cutting your marriage apart.
	You're cutting your marriage apart.
	See, people aren't like tumors.
	You've got a body with a tumor in them.
	What do you do? Well, you go in and you open up and you take out the tumor and the person is healthy again.
	It's not how the personality works.
	Everything is interdependent.
	Everything is interdependent.
	I mean, if I were in your shoes, I would just grovel.
	I'd apologize. I'd just apologize and say, look, I've been dividing you into things that I like and things that I don't like, and that's absolutely unfair.
	And God help it if she does that to you, which she is doing, right?
	She's saying you've been condescending, non-supportive.
	So she's now dividing you, and maybe she started it.
	I don't know. You're probably both in the same boat, but just accept her for who she is.
	Accept her for who she is. You chose her out of a crowd, right?
	You made a vow! Accept her for who she is.
	Stop trying to change her.
	You can't change people after you've married them.
	You can't. You can barely change them beforehand.
	You find someone you love, and you marry that person, and then you don't complain.
	I don't understand.
	I genuinely am baffled.
	I mean, assuming you're a reasonably attractive guy, you listen to this show, you're a smart guy, you look reasonably attractive.
	So you had your choice.
	You had your choice of women. This is the woman you chose.
	It's like me moving. I'm moving to a country.
	I moved to some country. I spent years researching it.
	I go on extended visits.
	I try living there for a year just to try it out.
	And then I finally move there.
	Oh man, this country is driving me crazy!
	God damn this country!
	I need this country to be different!
	I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh.
	I just need you to get how nuts this is you are doing great harm to her like in all seriousness you're doing great harm to her by claiming that you love her and then wanting to fundamentally alter who she is
	Very damaging. You will pay and pay and pay for this in ways that are probably hard to even imagine right now, but if you've ever known somebody who goes through a bad breakup and a divorce, you understand.
	Women take vows very seriously.
	Women have to live off vows, right?
	In all of history, women have to live off vows.
	Because the man can wander off and have a new family and she's stuck with a bunch of kids.
	She's got to live on vows.
	So when you say to her, for better or for worse, I love you, women take that incredibly seriously and they should and you should take that very seriously.
	You don't get to carve her up.
	You want some leg or some thigh?
	You don't get to carve her up.
	She is who she is. Now, does that mean she'll never change over the course of her marriage?
	Yeah, she'll change, she'll change, but not out of bullying, not out of positive and negative perspectives, not out of punishments and rewards.
	All that does is breed resentment, doesn't breed change.
	All right, let's see here.
	A lot of questions.
	All right.
	What would you...
	What advice would you give to a person who's awakened to the horror of their many years of our selected and degenerative behavior and is now so filled with shame that they can't figure out how to move past it or ever hope to assert their own needs in the world?
	How can the sort of person you'd certainly advise others to steer clear of based on their past hope to change their life and be able to form healthy relationships?
	Oh, I can tell you that. Oh, yeah, I can tell you that one for sure.
	I can tell you. Get mad at the people who propagandized you.
	Get mad at the people who propagandized you.
	All of the media, the schools, the internet, pornography, whatever it was.
	Whatever it was that propagandized you into this, our selected degenerate behavior, as you call it, those people did you great harm.
	They didn't give you noble ideals.
	They didn't give you good examples.
	They didn't give you the right approach to life.
	They didn't tell you the costs.
	They just... Fire dopamine into your system and you hop, skip, and jump like a guy coming across like a frog jumping across lily pads to get to the other side.
	You just chase dopamine.
	You can't invent morality and maturity and conservative values, for want of a better phrase.
	You can't invent morality all on your own.
	You can't invent better behavior all on your own.
	It would be like saying to go into somebody in the Pygmies and saying, I need you to build a jet engine.
	Like, this is a patient accumulation of...
	Thousands of years of wisdom, all of which got wrecked and destroyed, boomers and post-boomers, in one or two generations.
	Did people tell you, oh, here's the cost?
	Did you have more ennobled examples?
	Did you have better examples?
	Were there people in your life who were trying to help you live a better life?
	No. The skids were greased down to this hellhole, right?
	So you were robbed, you were betrayed, you were lied to, and you can get mad at the people who lied to you.
	Let's see. Do you have any content grappling with the effects of early porn exposure on the adult brain?
	I don't, actually.
	I did do an interview with a guy about pornography addiction and so on, and he had some thoughts about how to overcome it, your brain on porn or something like that.
	So I don't. I don't have anything like that.
	All right. Let's see here.
	Steph, why is judging people considered a bad thing?
	People also say not to judge a book by its cover, for example.
	But aren't judgments useful to quickly filter through people and waste less time?
	Or am I missing something here?
	So the reason, there's one simple reason why people are so sensitive to judgment, is that if anything that you say agrees with what their conscience says about them deep down, they will hit the freaking roof.
	They will absolutely hit the roof.
	There's an old movie...
	Hey, that's my bike. It's called Reality Bites with Janine Garofalo and Winona Ryder and...
	Oh, Ethan Hawke.
	A couple other people. And there's a terrifying, vulnerable, horrifying scene in it where Janine Garofalo is playing a girl who works in The Gap or some store and somebody sort of just mentions or points out that it's, you know... Kind of a waste of her abilities, right?
	And she gets really angry, really upset, and it's just, you know, this shaky, inverted pyramid, Gen X millennial hyper-vulnerability.
	It's just terrifying, because relationships, like one comment in relationships, just boom, right?
	Now, why did Janine Garofalo's character get so upset when somebody says that she was capable of much more, much more achievement, much more accomplishment?
	You say to the stoner, you know, you're kind of wasting your life here.
	If the stoner's conscience has been screaming that at him for the last 10 years or 20 years or more, If what you say links through the defenses and hooks into what the conscience, which is the internalized UPB, if what you say empowers the conscience, then you're detonating by remote control an explosion in their brain.
	Psychological. Like, they're incredibly vulnerable because people who are living badly, their conscience is constantly scanning the environment for reinforcement.
	Well, you won't listen to me, but maybe you'll listen to me and somebody else.
	So somebody out there who echoes what the conscience has been silently screaming at the personality, largely unheard for the last however long, if you say something that triggers someone, I'll give you an example from my own life, right? So, dated this girl off and on for a long time.
	Proposed. Went to get the ring.
	Well, went to get the ring. Proposed.
	We were going to get married. I had my dad.
	I mean, obviously I was kind of sleepwalking into a disastrous situation.
	And... A friend of mine's girlfriend was just commenting and she said, you'd think that somebody engaged would be a little happier.
	Well, that went...
	You've seen that meme of the knight, full armor, and then that arrow just goes right through the visor.
	Well, that went right through the visor.
	And it wasn't more than a week or two.
	I'd moved out. Why? Because my conscience was screaming that I should be happier, that this was a bad idea.
	But I felt on this conveyor belt of, this is what you do next, this is what you do next, this is what you do next.
	So I agreed with her.
	And later I thanked her.
	So, yeah, judging people is considered a bad thing.
	I mean, some people do it in a hostile or destructive way, for sure, but for the most part, if you agree with someone's conscience, they will get very mad at you, because if their conscience is armed and reinforced, then...
	The social layer that you find yourself in, usually the one that you're born into, they want to hang on to you.
	They want to hold on to you.
	Especially if you escape upwards, if you borrow upwards through these sentimentary layers, if you escape the underworld, if you escape the low world, people will really hate you.
	Because they think this is the world, that it's kind of cool, that it's better, right?
	If you're in a druggy environment and then you quit drugs, clean up, if you're in an environment of unhealth and overeating and then you slim down and get lean and eat healthy and all that, people will really dislike you because you are giving them...
	You're modeling a choice that they don't want to have, right?
	Your behavior gives them responsibility.
	If you can get out, they can get out.
	And if you're better off of getting out, then they're worse off of staying in.
	This is why trying to get out from horizontal...
	This is the class. Marxists don't talk about this kind of crap, right?
	Because all they want to do is say you can't get out and breed resentment.
	But in a sort of horizontal class, like I was born lower middle class.
	We fell down to absolute poverty.
	Well, not quite absolute poverty, but really damn close to it.
	And then in the business world, I moved to middle class, upper middle class.
	And of course, when I was in boarding school, I was around people who were very upper class, even aristocrats, kids of aristocrats, and so on.
	So I've really seen that sort of full social spectrum.
	And I can certainly tell you that trying to get out of it, trying to burrow your way out of it, trying to change classes is really hard.
	It's really hard. People really want to hang on to you like grim death so that you don't get away, you don't get up, you don't get better.
	Gary Wilson.
	Yeah, that's the guy I did the show on.
	How do I figure out what job I want in regards to a new career move?
	How do I balance passion with practicality?
	Yeah, I won't let you spread your paralysis to me.
	How do I figure out what job I want in regards to a new career move?
	It's like you're asking me, Hey Steph, what hobbies should I have?
	I don't know. I have no idea what.
	I don't know what job you should want.
	How do you balance passion with practicality?
	I don't know what you're passionate for.
	If you're passionate for computer programming, there's not an if-you.
	If you're passionate for mime, then you have an if-you.
	You're not giving me any information, and then you're saying, how do I solve this problem?
	So you're at the stage where you're trying to transmit your paralysis to other people, and you're going to keep anybody with good advice far away from you at that point.
	I say this with all affection.
	Steph, how long do you think the U.S. economy can survive without a collapse?
	Five years? Peter Schiff thinks 2023 will be a bad year for the U.S. economy.
	Well, the inestimable Peter Schiff is usually a good person to listen to with regards to economics.
	Yeah, I mean, the people who voted in Biden voted to kill their retirement plans.
	I mean, that's just basic, the way things are working.
	And this $1.7 trillion bill, what was the point of taking the House and signing all that?
	Anyway, that's all politics.
	Who cares? So, yeah, please, anybody who tells you they know what's going on with the U.S. economy, when it will do well, when it will do badly, they're just lying.
	Now, I'm not talking about Peter Schiff.
	I think that there are a lot of indications that 2023 will be a bad year for the U.S. economy.
	But as far as how long these things last, nobody can tell you because nobody's in possession of all the information.
	All right. Nope, you're wrong here, Steph.
	Okay, I'm not sure about what.
	Let's see here.
	Steph, with record levels of immigration to the U.S., with record levels of immigration to the U.S., what do you think U.S., what do you think will be the Balkanization, is there an example of this happening to a previous country?
	Yeah, you can watch my Truth About Rome presentation for that.
	Does anyone here know which episode Steph has talked about sleep training babies on?
	Okay, let people answer that.
	Yeah, FDR 3811 was the one I did with your brain on porn, Gary Wilson and me.
	All right. Somebody sent a $1 tip.
	How does one learn to self-soothe as an adult?
	Quick question. Do you spend more than that on a coffee?
	Of course you do, right? Steph, I would really like for you to give me an essential, skilled, deep and philosophical answer to my greatest issue as an adult.
	For a dollar. It doesn't bother me so much as I'm just a little baffled as to why you would view yourself as worth so little.
	My happiness, a potential path out of this maze of misery that I'm stuck in, me being happy, me getting this kind of insight and this kind of value, yeah, I would value my happiness at about a dollar.
	I just find it kind of funny.
	I mean, my God.
	Honestly, I would be... I would personally just myself...
	I would just... I'd be really embarrassed to ask an expert for a life-saving, a life-changing advice and send a dollar.
	I just... I would be embarrassed.
	I would be embarrassed because it would feel that I was denigrating myself and also denigrating the expertise of the other person.
	So... As far as...
	I mean, I'll answer the question because I think it's useful.
	How do you learn to self-soothe as an adult?
	I'm sure you've heard of this story.
	It's an old story. About a man who comes to the king and says, I have a magic ring.
	And this ring will make you happy when you're sad, but sad when you're happy.
	And the king asks for the ring.
	Long story short, it's a ring with the inscription inside, This too shall pass.
	How does one learn to self-soothe as an adult?
	It's going to pass. It's going to pass.
	And self-soothing is something that is social in nature as well.
	So if you have people around you who care about you, right?
	I mean, what is it they want to do when they want to break people is they isolate them.
	They put this firewall around them so that other people don't want to talk to them and won't take their calls or whatever.
	So in terms of self-soothing, I think it's not really very possible to self-soothe.
	You can do it with smaller things, but the way that you self-soothe is, you know, bathe deep in the glorious love of the people around you who care about you, and that's a great way to recharge.
	All right.
	Steph, I've read that inflating a currency incentivizes people to consume conspicuously and disincentivize a saving.
	Could this overconsumption due to inflation be what leftists are critiquing when they squeal about consumerism in the same way that when they criticize capitalism, they're actually criticizing the ill effects of crony capitalism or fascism?
	Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, this is why the environmental movement is...
	You know, 80% foreign government, Saudi kill your oil production propaganda because anybody who cared about the environment would first and foremost say, okay, well, what is it that drives overconsumption?
	Well, money printing.
	Money printing drives overconsumption and then they would say, well, what drives money printing?
	Well, central banking. So if you care about the environment, the first thing that you would want to do is get the currency back into private hands and have competition for which was the least inflationary currency and so on.
	And you would, of course, try to get as much resource control out of the hands of the state and back into the hands of private citizens because private citizens will conserve resources.
	The government has no incentive to do so.
	In fact, the government survives and flourishes by money printing and maximizing resource consumption.
	So I will take the environmentalism movement seriously when it becomes the minarchist slash anarcho-capitalist movement.
	Other than that, it's just a I mean, just remember when we used to sacrifice our young for the sake of the weather gods?
	We're still doing it now, right?
	Sacrificing their peace of mind and future financial security for the sake of climate change!
	So, yeah, for sure.
	But leftists or the people who critique...
	Look, I want you to think of two societies, egalitarian and meritocratic, right?
	The meritocratic society is a free market society and so on.
	And I want you to think of an egalitarian society with forced income redistribution.
	Now, I want you to think of the less successful groups in the meritocracy.
	The people, for whatever reason, some factors under their control, maybe some factors not so much under their control, they just can't compete.
	They can't compete. Now, if you can't compete with another organism, Like you're in sexual competition with another organism and you can't compete.
	What is your best strategy?
	Your best strategy is to cripple the more successful organism, right?
	Which is what fighting, animals fighting each other, the males fighting each other for the attention of females and so on.
	They're trying to cripple each other. So a very strong male creature will be attacked by a group of weaker male creatures and those weaker male creatures will attempt to scar or harm or undermine the strength and therefore sexual desirability of the alpha male.
	It's not super complicated.
	It's very, very common.
	It's all over the animal kingdom and so on, right?
	And so a group of weaker beasts will attempt to take down the stronger beast so that The females will be more likely to choose the weaker because the stronger has been crippled.
	This is, I mean, biology 101.
	You can't fight the alpha male, but you can gang together with a bunch of other creatures to wound the alpha male and reduce his status and reduce his desirability, and this gives you more chance to reproduce.
	This is what happens all the time in human history.
	So you want to view forced redistribution not in terms of politics, not in terms of economics, not in terms of morality, not in terms of class struggles and the workers controlling the means of production.
	That's all nonsense. It's all nonsense.
	What you want to do is you want to look at it from a genetic standpoint, from a reproductive success standpoint.
	When there is an alpha male in a meritocracy, and in particular, an alpha male in a meritocracy with modern media transmissions.
	I mean, if you look at Brad Pitt in his dope, smoking, endless exercise prime in Thelma and Louise or Fight Club or whatever, you see that picture, the pictures of him.
	I mean, is there really a man alive who can compete with that level of sexual desirability?
	Same thing maybe with Geena Davis in her prime, or Sofia Vergara, or whatever turns her particular crank, whether it's all the way back to, why do Dolly Parton's feet not grow, because nothing grows in the shade?
	If you look at the people who have hyper-sexualized physical characteristics, with Brad Pitt, there's a great hair, the sort of thug poet face, Zelensky has a little bit of that, And, you know, the narrow hips, the abs and all of that, and the broad shoulders, the narrow hips, the viper, they call it, right?
	So, that is somebody who, through hard work and through genetics, I'm just writing about one of these guys in my novel, so this is all kind of fresh in my brain, through hard work and genetics, and the genetics is actually driving the hard work, because a lot of people who could work out like Brad Pitt and never end up looking like Brad Pitt, he's naturally lean and so on.
	If you look at those hyper-sexualized people, and of course you see this in Playboy and all of this kind of stuff.
	I mean, I know that's kind of archaic and so on, right?
	Whatever the equivalent is these days.
	You see these physically beautiful people.
	You can see them on TikToks or Facebook shorts or whatever.
	Just the people who, you know, they wear the tight yoga pants, these women with these spectacular buttocks and big chests and all that.
	And, you know, they're always doing some sort of comedy, but basically it's ogling like when I was in the red light district in...
	Amsterdam. I shot a documentary out there which never got released because the guy...
	Anyway, so you want to look at this in terms of sexual selection, right?
	So girls will do this too.
	So if there's a woman who's super attractive, super popular, the other girls will spread rumors that she has defects to her personality in order to make her less attractive and thus have boys choose them instead because people don't want to feel like second or third choices, right?
	So with regards to income redistribution, what you want to do is you want to look at this as a way to equalize opportunity for mating strategies, to equalize opportunities for mating strategies, and to use the power of the state to take resources away from the alpha males and to redistribute it among the beta or zeta males.
	It's just a way of equalizing the opportunities to mate.
	And it's the same thing. Why do single moms vote left and married moms vote for the right?
	Well, married moms vote for the right because smaller government-less taxes means that their husbands and themselves, perhaps to some degree, are paying less in taxes, whereas the women on the left want men to date them and to have sex with them, as we all do. I mean, want people to date us and have sex with us when we're single.
	And so they want money coming in so that the expense of their children is not to be born by some boyfriend, right?
	So they come, they call them Goldfin Farms, like these single mom housing units and so on.
	I mean, I grew up in one. So...
	If the woman is getting welfare or is getting free healthcare or is getting, you know, some sort of old age pension or some sort of income support, this is also true for working in the government.
	I worked as a contractor in one government office in my life and, my God, they were the laziest people known to man.
	Like, honestly, just a 20-minute coffee break, an hour and a half lunch, and never really did anything.
	Spent a lot of time chatting and then had to hire people like me to actually get the work done.
	So it's a way of simply having resources available to you that you don't have to earn, which elevates your value in the sexual marketplace.
	So just think of resentful baiters wounding a successful male in order to have the females choose the less successful males.
	That's really what the left is all about.
	I felt class is determined by outlook, such as being future-oriented rather than income.
	Would you agree? I'm sorry, I don't really know enough about what you're saying.
	You talk about escaping the lower classes, and yet I come from money and would like sometimes to escape downwards, but I think you're talking about quality, not wealth, with regards to class.
	Yeah, probably more quality.
	I've known a huge number of extremely miserable wealthy people.
	I've known a huge number of very unhappy wealthy people.
	Let's see here.
	Weakening the alpha male.
	I saw it in real life. At the club, a guy started throwing money at the crowd and the other guys respond by throwing beer bottles and a fight broke out.
	Yeah, for sure. Guy throwing money at the crowd is a mating display and yes, you are going to be met with...
	I mean, this is why you see, if you look at the Andrew Tate situation, this was a guy really crassly displaying massive resource alpha male status and the fact that, I mean, there's some blowback for politics perhaps or something like that, but there is also, of course...
	Just the issue that if you throw your status around without adequate distance and protection, this is why a lot of people who are wealthy, you don't really know it, they don't really show it and so on, right?
	So I think that's kind of important.
	All right, any last questions or comments?
	I am certainly happy to hear.
	You can also see this where the sort of geeks and the jocks, right?
	So the geeks say that the jocks are dumb and don't read books and don't have any depth and so on.
	And the jocks say that the geeks are physically weak and scrawny.
	And so they're both just trying to throw shade on each other's sexual market value.
	Once you see this thing in life, so much pops into clarity and so on.
	And this is why politics became less interesting and enjoyable for me, because it's just a matter of an attempt to gain sexual market value.
	And, of course, stealing resources to gain sexual market value is a very common thing in nature and in society, of course, right?
	All right.
	What's the best way to donate to FDR?
	Does locals take a cut of donations in streams?
	Well, I mean, everything that you...
	It's not crypto. Everything that you donate has a cut taken from it.
	But whatever works for you, I'm not going to complain about anything.
	So whatever works for you, I am very, very happy to accommodate.
	Alright. Is there a time when a mating strategy works best?
	Boy, I'm getting a lot of incomprehensible questions today.
	I don't know what that means.
	What I meant by future orientation is delayed gratification.
	Money is an indicator, but I've seen that low-class people don't save.
	They spend all their money. Yes, they do.
	But then, you know, it's a bit of a circle, right?
	I mean, I remember when I got my first little bit of money and I remember saying to a friend of mine, oh, I want to take, you know, X amount of dollars and invest it in IBM. And he's like, oh, that's not going to add up to much.
	And he actually was studying economics at the time.
	So it's kind of tough.
	Like, let's say that you got an extra couple of hundred bucks a month.
	What are you going to invest in?
	I guess you could put it in savings, but here's the problem.
	You know, I mean, where do you put your money?
	Where do you put your money these days?
	Stocks are cratering all over the place.
	Crypto is stable but relatively low compared to what it was before.
	Inflation is killer.
	I've been seeing pictures of like $8 for a dozen eggs and so on and none of them belonging to Taylor Swift, tragically.
	So it is just wild.
	Where do you put your money? So spending money on immediate pleasures is perfectly sensible if saving isn't going to make that much difference.
	So, you know, if you've got an extra $100 or $200 or $300 a month, maybe you do want to splurge it on something that's going to give you pleasure in the moment because if you save it, well, inflation is going to take a cut or the stocks could go down or whatever, right?
	So, all the bonds might not cover...
	So, and this is inflation drives immediate consumption, right?
	Which is, again, why a lot of the people who care about the environment should be relentlessly opposing inflationary measures, but they don't, of course, because the environment is just, environmental concerns are just a voodoo doll to shake in front of people so they cough up money for ill-defined goals such as changing the weather.
	So, delayed gratification, I'm not such a great fan of it as a whole, but it's not so much, it is more around quality.
	It is more around quality.
	And money is not, you know, so the big issue with delayed gratification as, when you're poor, is to add to your human capital in a way that might not pay off for a long time.
	I mean, it was 15 years between me learning how to program and me getting a programming job.
	It was an equivalent amount of time, me graduating from a master's degree in history, in particular the history of philosophy, and starting this show.
	So it was, gosh, six...
	It was 20 years...
	No, it was a quarter century between me starting to write stories and getting anything published.
	There's a lot of delay, a lot of deferral of gratification.
	And of course, me telling the truth and getting deplatformed is, of course, you know, following integrity in what I need to say to be fulfilling the gig as a philosopher.
	But also it's about sacrificing the present views and income and influence in the present in order to have an expanded influence in the future.
	That's the ultimate default of godification.
	I've said that my business plan is 500 years.
	If I'm not relevant in 500 years, there really wasn't much point.
	In doing any of this, right?
	Because, you know, there's been stress and struggle and so on.
	And if, for me, if I trade relevance in the here and now in order to have a greater impact in the future, then that is a deal I'm absolutely willing and happy to make because that's the best thing that philosophy can do is to make the future a better place.
	But in order to make the future a better place, you have to say things in the present that That are going to be very opposed, right?
	Because then people say, oh, you're crazy, you say these things, they're wrong, and then as you end up being proved more and more right, you gain credibility over time.
	I mean, if you think of two thinkers, one is Nietzsche and the other is Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, neither of those thinkers had any particular relevance until the First World War, and in particular, Post-First World War.
	And I'm going to give you sort of mainstream interpretation.
	I have my own criticisms, of course, of both people, and I've talked about Freud and my criticisms of him at A Night for Freedom some years ago, and I'll be doing Nietzsche as part of my History of Philosopher series.
	But basically, the 19th century was going to be considered to be an upward march to basically paradise, right?
	Upward march to paradise. This was the general idea behind it.
	And the fact that Nietzsche said that God was going to be replaced by the state, and the collectivism of religion, which was largely voluntary in his day, was going to be replaced by egalitarian worship of the state and its redistributive powers, and that the philosophy of resentment, right, this is what I was talking about with the sexual selection and the attack of the Alpha by the Betas and Zetas, The philosophy of resentment was going to take over.
	That as society splintered and became, you had more successful and less successful people because of a free market, you were going to end up with resentment growing among what he called the slave moralities.
	The slave moralities. The people who have no power and make a virtue out of powerlessness.
	And he had criticisms of Christianity this way, right?
	So people who, they have no power, they have no aggression, they have no capacity to win anything.
	So they make a value and a virtue out of subservience and meekness and so on, right?
	And he said, but these people are bottling up their competitive instincts.
	And as the high get higher and individuals get more and more powerful and influential, they are drawing, like you draw back a bowstring, you let it go.
	They are drawing the resentments of the less successful against them and the less successful will ally with the power of the state.
	The state will milk their resentments and their hostility and their hatred for the higher, and they will use the power of the state to decapitate society in brutal wars and self-immolation and all of that stuff.
	And you know, it's not...
	I'm paraphrasing obviously to some degree, but Nietzsche was very clear about the nature of the state.
	He said everything the state says is a lie and everything it has, it is stolen.
	So, as you get increased, quote, inequality, in other words, you get justice based on voluntary transactions, right?
	But as you get increased inequality, The temptation to use the power of the state to re-equalize things by decapitating the high and raising the low is overwhelming, and he said that this will not be.
	What we call progress now is the calm before the storm of the destruction of the West in an orgy of vengeful and redistributive people.
	And so, yeah, the fact that the First World War destroyed almost all the value and savings and capital that had been created over the entirety of the Industrial Revolution, almost down to the last penny.
	So when it didn't turn out that the 20th century was an age of progress, but rather an age of the most...
	I've done a whole podcast on this, a whole series, The Truth About the First World War.
	It was really just about the saddest thing to ever happen in human history and one of the most awful and appalling things that ever happened in human history and it set the stage for so many terrible things that happened afterwards.
	And so all of the really wild optimists of The 19th century, when they were proven spectacularly wrong through the First World War, Nietzsche was rescued from obscurity.
	He'd already gone crazy by then, long before, and hugged a horse and went nuts and was cared for for the last 10 years of his life by his sister, where he basically had lost his mind completely.
	Some people think it was syphilis from his only encounter with a sexual being, which was a prostitute.
	We don't know for sure, probably never will.
	But... Nietzsche was right.
	Now Nietzsche was, you know, when he was writing, was virtually unremarked upon and sold maybe a couple of hundred copies of books like also Sprach Zarathustra and the Gay Science and the Antichrist and other things.
	But there was a renewed respect for him when what he predicted came true.
	So he said things that were weird and offensive and upsetting and people thought he was just a crazy guy, kind of was.
	But when events proved him right, he took his prominence.
	For Freud, and again, this is a mainstream perspective, for Freud it was a little different.
	So Freud was largely ignored over the course of the late 19th, early 20th century, But Freud and his explication of conflicts in the unconscious was the only thing that people could turn to to understand the concept of the issue of shell shock.
	The shell shock is the people who were brave, no question they were brave, they were committed, they were decorated soldiers, but they ceased to be able to function.
	In any sort of productive sense, they couldn't go back to war.
	They couldn't be used for anything. They just would stare into nothing.
	And it was called shell shock because they thought that maybe their brains had been severely bruised or damaged by the impact of a shell and the whiplash of the air movement and so on and the pressure of the shell explosion.
	So they considered that these men...
	Who were not cowards.
	I mean, they were decorated for bravery and they wanted to fight, but they just couldn't function.
	And nobody could really explain this.
	And this, of course, was because wars in the past were generally relatively short affairs in terms of battles.
	You didn't have this multi-year sitting in a trench having your frozen toes gnawed off by starved rats while some asshole 20 miles away pushed a button and blew you to smithereens or tried to So you didn't have this length of trauma in war.
	A fight or flight was supposed to be very, very short.
	Sword fights were very short and very energetic.
	So Freud was raised to prominence because he had a way of explaining this shell shock that had to do with trauma and the unconscious and so on.
	Because people who were so obviously out of control of their own mental capacities, you had to accept that there was something else in there That was interfering with what these men wanted to do.
	They wanted to go back to the front, but every time they would try and go back to the front, their hands would shake uncontrollably, they would faint, they would scream, they would wet themselves.
	So there was something else in control, something underneath the conscious mind that was disobeying what they wanted to do.
	And this idea of the conscious-unconscious conflict, which Freud had been talking about for a long time, Was irresistible in helping people to understand what was going on with regards to shell shock and things like that.
	So, in terms of delaying gratification, this whole show is about the delay of gratification.
	I want to be one of the foundations that builds a society like I describe in my novel, The Future, freedomain.locals.com, and that means deferring a lot of gratification in the here and now.
	Well, somebody says, well, I'm subscribed, so I paid for my seat here, I'd imagine, and it seems you answer questions even without a tip.
	And I tip coins every show.
	I'm sure you can see my name in the logs.
	And you even said at one point that you like 25 cents a show.
	No, actually, I sent 50 cents a show.
	I sent 50 cents a show. So I didn't mean any disrespect by it.
	I wanted to chip in and hear your thoughts.
	Sorry about the lowball tip.
	I only have 40 coins left.
	I appreciate that. Thank you.
	Thank you for all of your ongoing effort.
	Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	You just complained about my dollar.
	See, you're just kind of adding insult to injury here.
	I didn't just complain about your dollar.
	I told you the reasons why I thought it was denigrative to you and not exactly elevating to me.
	I gave sort of reasons and explanations and thoughts and feelings about it.
	And all you do is reduce that down to a complaint.
	Which you are perfectly free to do.
	You absolutely characterize it however you want.
	But if I have a criticism and I sort of give reasons and evidence and facts and so on behind it, and then you just say, well, you're just complaining.
	It's like, okay, well, I tried.
	I tried to communicate, but if you're going to reduce it down to something that's kind of an insult, then communication.
	I say this to you not because you care about me, some guy on the internet.
	This is all to do with illuminating things in your life.
	This is all to do with...
	I'm just like a test bed.
	I'm like a test case for things in your life.
	So I guarantee you that other people have issues with you which you just boil down to kind of insulting statements and that way you don't get feedback and because you don't get feedback it's tough to improve and because you denigrate other people's feedback to you they're not welcoming your feedback either which means you don't get this cross-pollinization of positive feedback that helps people.
	Steph, any recent experience with the great slowdown?
	I went to a restaurant, food was late, was wrong, and everyone seemed aloof.
	I noticed this carelessness in other businesses as well.
	Yeah. Yeah, no, it's all falling down.
	Yeah, it's all falling down.
	Yeah, so...
	Here's a tiny rant.
	It's a tiny rant. Okay.
	Okay. Hit me with a why if you've ever lost a credit card or a debit card or something like that.
	I don't mean just like your whole wallet, but maybe it is, right?
	But just, you know, you put a credit card down, you grab something, you just leave it there or whatever.
	So hit me with a why if you've ever lost or misplaced a credit card or a debit card, right?
	So not too long ago, I realized that I couldn't find a credit card.
	So, you know, you do the usual hunt around, that kind of stuff, right?
	And, you know, when it gets to the point where you're checking under couch cushions, you're like, okay, so...
	And, you know, it's not the end of the world if you've got to cancel it.
	You know, it's just a bunch of stuff you have to do.
	So, anyway. So, long story short, I went to look for it in a place where I had last been, just in case it hadn't...
	I went to ask, you know, people.
	And, anyway, so I ended up...
	There was this guy there...
	I don't have to get into details.
	There was this guy there... And I said, hey, man, you haven't by chance seen a credit card.
	He's like, oh, what's the name? I said, gave him my name, of course.
	And he's like, oh, yeah, I think we've got it.
	Really? Really?
	He's like, yeah, yeah, okay. So he went into his little booth and he came out and he's like, oh, yeah, this is your name, right?
	He's like, here's your credit card. I'm like, said, you know, I lost this like two days ago.
	Yeah, you know, I figured somebody would show up.
	Really? I don't understand.
	I've never understood this. So, I don't lose things a lot, but, you know, probably over the course of my life, if I lose a credit card once every 10 years, I've lost them on four or five, maybe four times or whatever, right?
	And not once. This is what you expect.
	You expect somebody to pick up the credit card.
	There's a number right on the back.
	You can call and say, I found this credit card.
	And then what the credit card company does is they call you, the credit card holder, and they say, hey, somebody found your credit card.
	Here's where it is. It's never once happened to me that someone has found a credit card.
	Phone the credit card company, the credit card company has phoned me, and I've gone to pick it up.
	I think most times I find it, I hook up, I screw up, and I think once I had to replace it in my life.
	Why? Why? It's a phone.
	Especially now you've got cell phones.
	Here, people, you pick up a credit card, turn it over, there's a number on the back, call that number, say, hey, I found this credit card.
	Can you contact the cardholder?
	It never happens. I've left a credit card behind in a restaurant.
	You know, you're having a big conversation.
	You fold it in the bill folder.
	And I've had to go back and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, you left this here.
	I'm like, just call the credit card company.
	They've got my number. Nope.
	I don't know why is that so impossible.
	It's one phone call.
	Everyone's got a phone in their pocket.
	It's just my tip, you know?
	I mean, I remember years ago finding some guys...
	Twice I found someone's cell phone.
	I don't just sit around and say, well, someone's going to come back for it.
	No, if I can unlock it, one was unlocked and somebody had just lost it.
	I just called the first person on that contact and said, I found this phone and the person came by and I gave them the phone back and Another time I just found a cell phone and it had on its lock screen, you call this number if it's found, and I, you know, I just help people, like just a little hands across the water, help people a little bit here and there.
	It's just kind of funny with this great slowdown.
	Yeah, everything's just slow.
	Hey Steph, you have ignited the flame of fatherhood within me and two days ago our second child was born in good health.
	I'm 46. Do you have any ideas or thoughts about parenthood at a higher age?
	Many thanks. Well, congratulations.
	That is wonderful to hear. So be playful, obviously.
	What you're going to need to do in your 40s, so you're a little older than me when I had my daughter, but you've got to exercise, you've got to stretch.
	Stretching is a very underrated thing when you get older.
	I stretch every day.
	I stretch my mind.
	I stretch every day.
	I stretch. I have tight hamstrings.
	I grew up with lumbago, which is like your bones are growing faster than your tendons.
	So I had to take these sort of hot and cold baths and massage and I had this ache in my legs for quite a while when I was growing up.
	And I still need to stretch.
	Every night. I have to do hamstring stretches.
	I have to do calf stretches. I will generally do runner stretches.
	I will do quad stretches and butt stretches and so on.
	It just helps me sleep because if I don't do the stretches, I get jimmy legs where my legs just have to keep moving and I can't get really any sleep.
	And so, stretching is very underrated.
	I didn't need to stretch when I was younger, but stretching is really, really important.
	Getting a massage gun to keep your muscles...
	Like, if you're over 40, in my humble opinion, like at least what I do, I don't know what you should do, but when I got over 40, and particularly over 50, you get these little massage guns, you just push a button and the little ball goes back and forth.
	And I will do that every day or two, just play it around my body, see if I have any tight spots, and just, you know, try and loosen them up, right?
	So stretching and massaging and just keeping yourself young.
	You need to do preventive exercises.
	So for me, if I'm playing racket sports, one of my weaknesses is calf muscles for lunging.
	So I have to do calf exercises outside of that just to keep that going.
	So you've got to keep yourself limber.
	You've got to keep yourself strong and all of that.
	And, of course, you have an extra, extra, extra responsibility to stay healthy because you're an older parent, and you don't want to burden your kids with you getting sick when they are launching out into their lives.
	So you're 47, so you're 46, which means you're going to be 64 when this kid is 18.
	So you want to give them at least 10 years out there in the world before you start keeling over.
	So you have an extra responsibility.
	Keep your weight down. Keep walking.
	Keep exercising and stretch and all of these good things because they get a lot of benefits with an older parent.
	They get some additional money in the bank.
	They get maybe some additional time.
	They get additional maturity. But one of the downsides is that you don't want them to be having to take care of you when they're launching themselves out in the world.
	It's a really special, extra special obligation to stay healthy and stay at a healthy weight and so on.
	So congratulations. Fantastic.
	Well done for you. Any thoughts on the death of Pope Benedict XV1? Back in time with Louis XV1 in the court of the people, he was number one.
	I don't have any thoughts on the death of Pope Benedict XVI. I mean, the church as a whole is hyper-feminized and sentimental and all that sort of thing.
	You need the masculine as well as the feminine, so...
	It's not just a phone call for credit card return.
	You have to stay on hold for like 40 minutes, 45 minutes now.
	Oh yeah, don't you love that?
	You know, we really value, we really value your business.
	Just not enough to hire enough people.
	It's like, you don't value my business.
	If I have to sit on hold for 45 minutes, you don't value my business.
	Clearly you're cutting corners and you're wasting my time rather than hire people.
	So yeah, I just, it's a lie.
	We really value your business.
	No, you don't. You don't value me.
	You don't value my business because you're willing to cut corners at your end so you can get giant bonuses rather than have enough people to help me at my end.
	And, yeah, if you find a wallet, yeah, move heaven and earth to help it get back to the owner for sure.
	My girlfriend would get pissed if I gave her a dollar for Valentine's Day.
	Yeah, you know, it's funny because people ask me the most essential questions about life happiness that require some pretty significant wisdom and experience.
	Like you're tapping into somebody who's been doing philosophy for 40 years, invented an entirely new and valid system of ethics, has had a thousand conversations with people about their deepest and darkest things in their life, have gone through years of therapy myself and years of self-knowledge.
	So you're tapping into a deep...
	Unique vein of wisdom in this show, which apparently is worth a dollar.
	I don't know. It's just kind of funny.
	It's just kind of funny.
	All right. What was taught to me is to not bother picking something up that's not yours if you're not going to try and find the owner.
	The owner might return to the location where he lost the item.
	Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, to me, it's just a basic empathy test, like, would you like it, right?
	So once I found someone's wallet, and yeah, I just, and this is back in the day, I had to call a whole bunch of people and so on to make sure he got the wallet back, but, you know, you're saving someone weeks of their life getting everything replaced, right?
	Possible identity theft or whatever, right, so...
	I tend to lose things because when I was young, my pathological brother would steal since he was five, and my parents would always say that I misplaced it, and that clearly wasn't the case.
	Yeah, I think I mentioned this before.
	I had a fantasy when I was young, when I was a kid, that when I couldn't find something, the space aliens had beamed it up for study, right, to research it, and then they would beam it back down, but in a slightly different location because the beaming wasn't quite perfect.
	So I'd put it down here, but it would end up over there.
	So just beaming it up, and I thought it was happy to add to the knowledge of the galaxy.
	Let's see here. What happens when you forget something in Japan?
	Boy, Japan has a big problem with child pornography.
	Did you know that? Did you know Japan?
	I know a lot of people. Oh, it's so base and so on, right?
	And Lloyd DeMoss had something to say about all of this.
	But Japan has a huge problem with child pornography.
	And they only made it illegal, like, what, 10 years ago or something like that?
	So, huge problem.
	And the social media site Mastodon has had a massive invasion of child pornographers and child sexual abuse material distributors and so on.
	And, yeah.
	What was the worst country you visited?
	Australia? No, I got to speak in Australia.
	The most violent country was, an unstable country, was New Zealand.
	New Zealand was the first time I couldn't speak.
	The amount of intimidation and violence often cheered on by pretty significant elements of society.
	Just hopped on here.
	Do you believe in second chances?
	I do philosophy, not fortune cookies.
	You'll need to be more detailed. Tips for male and late twenties who didn't date much in adulthood but wants to start.
	That's tricky, man. That's tricky because you are...
	I mean, there's strengths and weaknesses in that situation, right?
	So the strength is that you haven't had your heart broken 10 times or whatever.
	The weakness is that you're just going to have to embrace the awkwardness, right?
	Anytime you start something new, you have to get over the awkwardness phase, right?
	You just do things wrong and you feel awkward and just, you know, learn piano and your fingers feel like sausages when you want to be Liberace playing Freddie Mercury, right?
	So... Alright.
	Yeah, just, you have to just, and be upfront.
	So yeah, I haven't really dated.
	I don't know what I'm doing. And just aim for good conversation.
	If you find someone you're sexually attracted to that you have great conversations with, just lock him down with a ring.
	For heaven's sakes. Is Kanye right?
	I don't know what Kanye is.
	I don't know what Kanye is.
	But it seems to me somebody pretty tired of his life.
	What do you mean by the church needing the feminine and the masculine?
	Considering their persecution, early Christians had little room for heresy and were not hippies as the communist infiltrators would like us to think.
	I don't know. See, when people say, they ask me an open-ended question and then they get a pretty punchy and aggressive response to their own question.
	Sometimes people tell me I'm thinking too much.
	Can you ever think too much?
	Sure. Have you ever seen Hamlet?
	Of course you can think too much.
	At some point, the purpose of thinking is action.
	And if you are circling with thinking without producing any action, then you might be stuck in a bit of a loop.
	I do think it's possible, but 99 times out of 100, when people tell you that you're thinking too much, it's because you're getting close to something they want to keep hidden.
	Some guilt, some standard that is going to undo their confidence, or their false confidence.
	Alright, questions, comments, issues, last track, last track.
	I love the straightforwardness.
	I want to give my mom a second chance, but want to be straightforward with her and refuse to lie or avoid bad habits and behavior.
	I've had a couple conversations with her and she owns that she wasn't a good mom and seems to want to get therapy and help.
	So, do you know when you become...
	I hate to use this language because I know it gets misused a lot, but I'll tell you this.
	You become a truly adult male.
	You become a man in this moment in your life.
	In this moment in your life is when you become a man.
	And the moment is this. When you don't think about your relationship with your mother, you think about how your future wife is going to evaluate your mother.
	And listen, I was older than I should have been when I realized this, so I say this with all humility.
	He was born in the winter of his 27th year.
	So you become an adult male, you become a man, when you no longer think, how was my relationship with my mom?
	But you look at your relationship with your mother from the cold-eyed view of a woman who might want to marry you.
	And I did not have a relationship that led to marriage as long as I had my mother in my life.
	And I understand why. Now, of course, in hindsight, I didn't think anybody knew consciously at the time.
	But, you know, the women would look at my relationship with my mother and look at my mother and say, well, I could spend another 40 years with this woman.
	Having an effect on my family and on my husband.
	And they were like, nope, he's a good-looking guy.
	He's a lot of fun. Good dancer, but it's not worth it for that, right?
	So, yeah, I mean, as far as do you want to give your mom a second chance?
	I mean, it looks like you're in a relationship already, so...
	If you're in a relationship already, you don't sit there and say, do I want to give my mother a second chance?
	You say, is it beneficial for my children for me to have this person in my life?
	First, is it beneficial to my future wife?
	I hope when my daughter starts dating and she meets some guy and all of that, that he's going to look at me and say, yeah, okay, this is valuable to have.
	It's a good, useful addition, good to have in my life.
	It would be a good granddad and all that.
	It would be wonderful. And you want to be that kind of person, but, I mean, thinking about your relationship with your mother in isolation is the mark of a child and of a very young man, but saying, how is my future wife going to view my relationship with my mother?
	Is it beneficial to her?
	Future children, or current children and wife.
	It just makes it a whole lot easier.
	Hey Steph, why do you think there's a lot of misinformation in the fitness industry?
	Is it because the ones with the most aesthetic physiques deep down are very insecure and have to gatekeep so that no one else can have a better physique than them?
	A lot of misinformation in the fitness industry.
	Well, there's a lot of individual variation in the fitness industry and it is fairly corrupted by steroids and things like that.
	And of course, there's a great deal of secrecy around the steroid question and the steroid use because a lot of people who are like, you can do this like I have and then they hide the fact that they're using steroids.
	So there's a lot of...
	a lot of...
	Fraud in the industry, right?
	I mean, there are people who, I lost this amount of weight!
	And, you know, they won't show you the extra fat hanging like a soft Niagara off their belly, right?
	Or they'll say, well, I lost all this weight!
	And then they'll show you a backlit picture of them in a bikini, but they won't show you the scars they got from having the excess skin removed from their belly.
	This before and after stuff where you see somebody who's like, you know, 350 pounds and then they're 120 pounds, none of that's real.
	Because you end up with these extra folds of fat, in general, if you're older, hanging off your body.
	And so this idea that you can go from, you know, Melissa McCarthy to, I don't know, Christy Brinkley in her prime, it's complete fantasy.
	And of course, most people, like 90, 95%, 98% of a long period of time, 98% of the people who lose weight just gain it back again and more, oftentimes, right?
	Because when you lose weight, your body goes into starvation mode and then extra every calorie, extra...
	Every extra calorie you get gets stored as fat.
	And of course you can't get rid of fat cells.
	You can only reduce their size and so on.
	So there is a huge amount of fantasy and fraud, really, in my view, in the fitness industry as a whole.
	And it's like this line from Notting Hill, the movie, and I think it's pretty true, right?
	Jennifer Aniston was 20 pounds heavier, and you look at Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox and friends, I mean, they're skinny as rails, as is Kudra.
	And I guarantee you these people have been hungry for decades.
	And it's pretty rough, you know, staying slim.
	You know, we're not designed really to be that skinny.
	We need a little bit of excess weight for when we get stomach bugs and you can't eat for a week, right?
	And so being that skinny is really, really tough on the body, tough on the system.
	Of course, I just read this Janet McCourty book.
	She was a Nickelodeon star, I think, a child star, and she was binge purging for years and years and years.
	And so... Yeah, it's pretty rough, you know, and a guy I knew who was really cut, yeah, it was like three hours a day in the gym, three and a half hours a day in the gym.
	Oh, you can do it better than that, faster than that.
	It's like, can you? Can you really?
	And it's really, it's unsustainable, right?
	Unless it's your job, right?
	If it's your job to be fit, then, you know, if you're a model or you're, you know, an actor who needs abs or whatever, it's your job to be fit.
	But I remember when I was watching an interview with the guys who were just in the new Maverick movie, the new Top Gun movie, and they were like, you know, they were young guys and they, you know, dieted like crazy for the beach volleyball scene and worked out like crazy for the beach volleyball scene.
	And when the scene was shot, they went out for pizza and beer and they were just weeping with relief at not having to do it anymore.
	And then they were weeping because it turns out they didn't get the shot just right and needed to do it and they had to go back on the diet for another 10 days.
	And it's like, that's absolutely unsustainable.
	And so, of course, you get these ridiculous, you know, all the women saying, oh, body image, body image.
	It's like, no, no, no, no, come on.
	At least women can lose weight.
	For men, it's height, which is really beyond your control.
	But, you know, the women are like, look at Barbie, she's so unrealistic.
	It's like, have you seen Thor, the action hero, or G.I. Joe, whatever?
	It's all abs and shoulders. So narrow waist, broad shoulders.
	It's like a woman with a tiny butt and big boobs.
	It's like a genetic abnormality.
	So there's a lot of lies, a lot of idealism, and a lot of falsehood.
	And, of course, it's all really pumped by this crazy, crazy food pyramid that's just absolutely mental, just how bad that food pyramid is.
	Yeah. All right, let's see here.
	Is there any modern music that you like?
	Has anything beat Queen yet, in your opinion?
	Well, they haven't beat, but yeah, there's some modern stuff that I like, and I've only got a couple of minutes here, so I'll do that another time for sure.
	Justin Bieber. I mean, you know, talented guy.
	You should see him drum. Boy, you want to see a young Karen Carpenter drum.
	That was something else, man. A woman who died, a beautiful voice, and she died of anorexia, I think.
	But, yeah, really fantastic drummer.
	And Justin Bieber can pound the skins pretty hard, too, so...
	Alright, so, yeah, I've got to stop here.
	Time flies. I wasn't going to do a full show, but you guys are just too fascinating, too interesting.
	Thank you so much. Food pyramid was introduced by the Department of Agriculture.
	Zero vested interest. Oh, yeah.
	Everything the government says is a lie and everything it has, it is stolen, as Nietzsche says, right?
	So, yeah, the food pyramid.
	Oh, red meat is so bad for you.
	It's like, no, no, no. They just want you on carbs and soy to stay weak and dazed.
	All right. Thanks everyone so much.
	A great, great show to chat with you tonight.
	It was a genuine pleasure and an honor.
	Freedomman.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
	You know that you want to.
	You know that you need to. And I certainly would appreciate it enormously.
	So have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
	I will talk to you soon. Lots of love.

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